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Hands-On Look At the BlackBerry Storm 2

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the running-scared dept.

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?"

10 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. LOL by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After the disappointment of the Palm Pre, could this be the smartphone to beat?"

    Um, yeah, let's not mention the elephant in the room, shall we?

    --
    Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    1. Re:LOL by Shane112358 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Palm Pre was certainly only a disappointment to those people who expected it to be the second coming of Jesus or to overtake the iPhone within months of release. I have a Pre and it is the best phone I have ever owned. The OS is top notch. The hardware isn't perfect but neither was the iPhone when it came out. As someone else said, the problem is that you need to compete with the ecology of Apple - not just the h/w or s/w. So even if all the small shortcomings of WebOS are addressed, and the next Pre has none of the h/w issues of the first, and it's very popular - it still doesn't mean that it will "kill" the iPhone. It will take a while - at least a year or so - for the iPhone to be dethroned by any competing architecture. It will happen, for sure. Whether it's one year or ten years from now is up to Apple, their competitors, and shear luck.

    2. Re:LOL by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You know what would be REALLY nice? If I could just swap phones as needed during the course of the day. For example - walking the dogs, or shopping, or driving - take a flip-phone. At the office? Move my "identity" into a smartphone. This way I don't have to decide between something small that fits in a pocket and won't break if I drop it, and something that has more functionality.

    3. Re:LOL by Anonymous+Monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I state them as separate because the people I know with iPhones use them differently than other smart phone users. I have had some one hand me their iPhone with a map loaded to show me how to get to a restaurant, something normally done verbally or with a quick sketch. I know iPhone users who keep their complete photo collection on their phone, most people use the phone to hold snapshots only. A friend of mine uses his iPhone to watch movies, no other smart phone user I know keeps movies with him. The iPhone is, in my opinion, a portable media computer with phone functionality. The first real attempt to make a Tricorder prehaps, but the difference between an iPhone and the average smart phone is as great as the difference between the average smart phone and my moms cell phone without a camera.

      --
      We are the Borg...
  2. "feels just like clicking a button" by toppavak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was under the impression that the problem most users have with touchscreens isn't feedback after clicking, but before. I can touch-type on my blackberry, which lets me go a lot faster than on smooth touchscreens because I can tell my finger is on the right button by feel.

  3. "Developers, Developers, Developers..." by nweaver · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To quote MonkeyBoy, err, Steve Ballmer...

    This is why the iPhone has become so entrenched, it has the developers. Its not just a matter of building hardware that matches Apple, you now have to build an ecology to match Apple.

    Which is very hard: . Look at the MP3 player market. People have made plenty of players better than the iPod-of-the-time, but Apple has the ecology annd is now hard to displace.

    --
    Test your net with Netalyzr
  4. If they want the storm2 to be more successful... by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... they need to release it on a more relevant network. Just because Verizon claims to have the most subscribers in the US doesn't mean its a relevant market for blackberry phones. In particular the fact that Verizon is still clinging to old network technology makes it a bit of a burden for phone deployment in corporate environments. GSM networks are head and shoulders above the Verizon network in speed of phone deployment.

    If an employee drops their phone and needs to replace it ASAP, someone in the company can pull the SIM card, put it into a new phone, and the employee is back to work with minimal downtime - unless you're on a non-GSM carrier in which case you need to have the magic store deactivate the old phone, sell you a new phone, activate it, etc...

    If RIM doesn't realize that their terrible choice of carrier (on an exclusive deal no less) was a big part of the lack of success in the first generation storm, then they need to have their heads examined. Release the new phone on a modern GSM network and we'll see how it really fares.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  5. The important question... by Linker3000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does it support IMAP/POP/SMTP natively or are you still stuck with the pile-of-crap BIS/BES services for email (or using Web interfaces or third party java apps)?

    I won't even consider looking at this model for the rest of our small (16) corporate team unless we can use our own (postfix-based) mail servers. The fact that we have to hand over our email account usernames and passwords AND pay just so the Vodafone BIS server can pick up mail and kindly pass it on to the Blackberries (and vice versa) is simply crap, a security risk and a PITA if a user changes their password via our mail server's Web interface.

    That is why I have an HTC Rhodium (Touch Pro 2)!

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO
  6. Rolling disappointment by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > After the disappointment of the Palm Pre, could this be the smartphone to beat?

    Does everyone already forget that the Pre was going to be the one to beat after the disappointment of the Storm? Clearly the Pre 2 will be the one to beat after the disappointment of the

    There's nothing wrong with the Pre, and the "disappointment" has little to do with the phone. The disappointment is that it didn't stop the iPhone from clobbering them in the market in spite of the hue and cry from the haters and fanbois alike. If you define your disappointment by the lack of relative sales, then my guess is that this is going to be a disappointment too.

    It's not about the phone, it's about what you can get onto the phone quickly and easily. Anyone that's Midomi'd a song while walking past a bar patio and then instantly downloaded it from iTunes knows what I mean. Consumers get this, and it seems only the self-declared "experts" who are missing this forest.

    Maury

  7. Re:If they want the storm2 to be more successful.. by seanmeister · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can bash VZW's CDMA network all you want, but as long as they keep giving me 4 bars of EVDO goodness out here in the desert in rural southwestern New Mexico, they'll get nothing but love from me :)