Hands-On Look At the BlackBerry Storm 2

Barence writes "PC Pro has had time to play with the new BlackBerry Storm 2, and came away impressed. The new touch system garners the most praise, doing away with the mechanical click screen of the original Storm — the new screen gives a kind of localised haptic feedback which 'feels just like clicking a button.' The phone, announced today, also includes Wi-Fi, BlackBerry OS 5, and increased storage, so it's looking an enticing prospect. After the disappointment of the Palm Pre, could this be the smartphone to beat?"

Comments

Blackberry would be more compelling

[swb]

If there was more direct data in/out to the device, versus "securely" routing everything through RIM. That model seems like it makes sense in a 1999 way, but now it just makes it awkward to use them outside of a BES environment.

The iPhone may be a closed platform, but at least data I/O isn't forced through Apple's servers.

Re:Disappointment of the Palm Pre?

[giverson]

Yeah, I don't get that. I absolutely love my Pre. And to answer your question, Exchange syncing works great.

Re:"feels just like clicking a button"

[Anonymusing]

I am so used to the iPhone "keyboard" now that I can essentially touch-type. Sometimes I fat-finger it and hit the wrong key, but the correction feature is pretty good about that. I'm not saying the iPhone is better or worse than other smartphones; merely, it's what I have now, and the typing does not feel much different than when I had a Blackberry.

FWIW, I type roughly 85 words a minute on a full-size keyboard (with 95% accuracy).