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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?"
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!
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.
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.
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
Yeah, I don't get that. I absolutely love my Pre. And to answer your question, Exchange syncing works great.
Capitalism does not lead to corruption, lack of character does.
From my cold dead hands! I love my Storm 1.
Oh, and might I add: You damn, dirty apes!
Amen. I bought the Storm. What a complete piece of shit. Sluggish OS (in a touch screen OS, absolutely intolerable), graphical glitches abound... it just sucks.
I'll second that, and I also appreciate being able to connect to the wireless network at my office with it (WPA Enterprise), which nobody's managed to do yet with an iPhone/iPod Touch.......
Now, hopefully the apps will start to flow a little faster. There are some nice ones out now, and more every day, but I particularly would like to see the Sirius/XM player, Skype, and eReader come out soon.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
To me, the only disappointment in the Palm Pre is SPRINT!
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
Love the Pre, but seriously when provided by Sprint you have to hack it in order to enable tethering. Also you have to hack it if you unsubscribe in order to use the wifi. Will the hacking of Pre become greater than the hacking of IPhone? For Linux users Pre is more of a slam dunk....
... I know exactly what you're talking about! After buying my Pre, I found that:
- I didn't immediately lose weight
- I still had to wear glasses
- the damage to my hearing (after 20 years of listening to good music) wasn't repaired
- my credit limit wasn't raised, and my day-to-day living expenses weren't reduced
Sure, overall it's a great phone, as far as portable phones that store important information, take pictures, play music and access the internet go, but those four points stick in my craw. Fail!
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I'll second that, and I also appreciate being able to connect to the wireless network at my office with it (WPA Enterprise), which nobody's managed to do yet with an iPhone/iPod Touch.
Pardon me? Nobody? This has been a feature since iPhone/iPod OS 2.0 came out and I have been running it ever since then.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
... 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.
As a former Storm owner I think RIM has gone a long way to fixing several of the idiotic design choices (compromises) in the Storm Mk1. I never had a problem with the click screen after applying some recommended fixes. I hope the build quality had been improved as I went through 4 phones before giving up. Probably the biggest issue I had with the phone (as a smartphone) was the terrible memory management. Blackberry, while they advertize several gigs of internal storage, use a small dedicated memory pool for the OS, program storage, and data (email) storage. On the original that was 128 MB. Just turning the phone on dropped that to 50 MB usable and after loading several apps, it would drop to 10-20. At that level the phone became very sluggish. And the OS have a propensity to leak memory so that as the day went on your usable memory level would continue to fall to the point where you had to pull the battery to reset the phone.
Conservative, mod down for violating
I almost bought the storm, but i went to the store and tried it out and didn't like the touch screen. So i bought the blackberry BOLD 9000, and I am very happy with it.
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
> 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
The Storm doesn't seem to be a business centric phone like the rest of the Blackberries. So having it on a carrier without SIM cards isn't that big of an issue. Besides, there are probably plenty of people on the Verizon network (most subscribers in the US, like you said) just waiting for a decent smartphone to be available on Verizon's network. It really doesn't sound that complicated on a non-GSM carrier. You still need to obtain a new phone from somewhere, even if you have a SIM card.
Agreed... I bought the original Storm when it was released last year, It was my first BlackBerry device, and after struggling with the Storm for a few days, I ran away screaming back to my dumbphone. The Storm hardware and software were definitely not ready for prime time.
I recently decided to give BlackBerry another day in court and am currently using a Curve 8330... I like it quite a lot and am considering the Storm 2 as my next upgrade, but I'll definitely do some hands-on testing before I actually purchase it.
When I say above "being able to connect to the wireless network at my office with it (WPA Enterprise), which nobody's managed to do yet with an iPhone/iPod Touch", I'm talking about a specific network (at my office), not all WPA Enterprise networks. For whatever reason, a Pre can connect with no problem, but iPhones/iPod Touches do not. Oddly, OSX laptops connect just fine as well, so I was surprised when other Apple products had trouble.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
It amuses me when users that opt for technology with a fair degree of vendor lock-in, feature control (or plain, simple pose/fanboi value) 'look forward' to features that the rest of us have had for years.
I have an HTC Rhodium (Touch Pro 2) and HTC have done a good job to hide the abomination that is Windows Mobile with a fairly decent (but not perfect) touch interface, wireless works, I have VNC, PockeTTY and Remote Desktop support loaded (for 'emergency support'), I am about to load up a VoIP app (SJPhone) and I can browse networks & print. TomTom satnav's on and I have just installed a Spanish-English dictionary for a holiday next week. The developer community (eg: xda-developer) is very strong so there are lots of commercial, free and shareware tools and apps available and, well, it's a decent phone too!
AT&ROFLMAO
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 :)
2 GB of Storage = Fail. 'nuff said.
The Storm may be a great Blackberry, but that doesn't make it the smartphone to beat. That remains the iPhone until proven otherwise.
Individual phones may have great features (The Pre has its relatively unrestricted development environment and multitasking, Blackberries have the BES for corporate management, etc., and Android has whatever the hell Android has), but until you take the full ecosystem that Apple's spawned and replicate most of it elsewhere they're still the king of the hill.
It's not that Apple invented the smartphone per se (I still remember my old Treo 650 that usually worked, for instance, and my 1st generation Blackberry I used at my old job), but the current popular definition of a smartphone is pretty much "has a touchscreen, runs bajillions of apps, is shiny and pretty, and can be my media center".
AKA iPhone. They created the definition that the average person is using nowadays, they were the first mover, and their app store has created a huge platform lock-in.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Fundamentally the Pre and webOS have always been brilliant, second only to the iPhone in many ways and superior in a few (brilliant multitasking interface, brilliant unobtrusive notifications interface, gesture area below screen, keyboard, universal SMS/chat threads, TeleNav navigation included with plan, etc.). It also has a development platform with, for most developers, the shortest learning curve (using HTML/JavaScript for all the local apps).
The only things that have ever been an issue with the Pre were a few bugs (not show-stopping, mostly related to bluetooth and the like), almost all of which they've fixed by webOS 1.2; and the battery life, which seems to also have been somewhat mitigated by newer OS versions. The Pre as it stands now is a rock-solid platform, with very arguably better messaging capabilities than either the iPhone or the Storm for anyone who doesn't explicitly need Blackberry Enterprise Server compatibility (Pre works flawlessly with Exchange).
BB Storm on the other hand is glued to an antiquated OS that has had successive layers of cruft grafted onto it to modernize it (evidenced nowhere more than the fact that a touchscreen phone still essentially has an on-screen pointer, with the click action being separate from the touch action). Worse, it's much more of a bear from a developer standpoint.
Apparently you're not from the midwest. The Blackberry smartphones have been incredibly popular out here in Verizonland - if, for no other reason, than there are no other smartphones worth half a damn available.
With Verizon bandwidth fees and quality of service/bandwidth throughput, you're not going to be able to use an iPhone or WinMo phone anyway...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
This is a relevant complaint, except in the case of Verizon it takes a 90 second phone call to support (or use of an automated tool) in order to change phones. As long as the new phone is compatible with the network, they will switch it over no questions asked. Your hyperbole about how much easier this is to accomplish with a GSM SIM card is pretty, well, hyperbolic. You may have had a point if you told us that contact lists in non-SIM enabled phones are harder to transfer, but again there are several tools thanks to Verizon that make it an easy task. That being said, even if it were a hassle to switch devices when one broke, I still would never consider signing with ATT, Tmobile, or Sprint. Their networks, in EVERY area I have traveled in the past few years, have been noticeably inferior to Verizon's. I can't even remember the number of times I have had to say "here, use my phone, it works here" when traveling. Too many, to be certain.
Serious question - I'm a dumbphone user finally wanting to move to a smartphone, and in the next couple of months. I have to (read: want to) stay on Verizon, and don't want a Windows Mobile phone. I've decided on either the Storm2 or the upcoming Android phones, but am not sure which to go with.
Essentially what I want is a phone that I can email/message/facebook/twitter/do tasks/organize my life with. I want to be able to browse the web, but I don't see myself spending lots of time doing that; usually I see it just looking up something quick. I also don't see myself as a big apps/games user, but then again having never had that experience I don't know - maybe I would if the opportunity were there.
From what I can tell, my impressions are:
BB pros:
better build quality
good (best?) messaging/email ability (I don't really know, but figured that was their background so it must be very good?)
relatively proven track record for phones like this
BB cons:
lack of webkit browser (aren't they supposed to be working on this? when? would the S2 get it eventually?)
generally "closed" system
I have the perception there's less consumer app development for BB than with other platforms
Android pros:
webkit browser
open system
app development seems to have more potential, especially with consumer apps
Android cons:
how is the messaging? Does it work well?
still young...although that doesn't bother me that much
from what I have seen of the VZW leaks, the form factors don't seem as nice as the BB.
Having experience with neither, I don't really know if I have a preference between hard or soft keyboards.
Thoughts or advice?
There was a segment on the daily show recently where Stewart showed how CNN would allow people to make spurious claims and then say "ok, we're out of time!" without making them back up their claims. That's a little how I feel here. How is the Pre disappointing? My impression is that most people who own one really love it and are very cognizant of the advantages over the iPhone (multitasking, open development environment, using the data connection for things that are actually useful).
So I'm wondering if this "disappointment" is just the disappointment of barrence, and really has no baring on the general view of the public. Any way, we're out of space on the synopsis, so I guess we'll never know.
or else!
"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..." ... CDMA.
If the SIM is from the same carrier or if the phone is "unlocked".
CDMA is a better technology than GSM. In fact the new high speed GSM modes are based on
Verizon and Sprint both seem to deliver better service in more places than TMobile and AT&T which are the two GSM providers.
The idea of unlocked phones with SIM cards is great and if you travel to europe a lot GSM is the way to go but it isn not an old network technology.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I loved my first Pre, until it went into speaker mode and would not come out. My second Pre ran fine, until about 3 PM each day when the battery would be empty. My third Pre, I coddle, because it tried to go the same way as the first. I resurrected it by swirling a denuded Q-tip in the headphone jack. Yes sir, only bluetooth headphones for my baby now. Seriously, the OS *is* brilliant compared to the others (quasi-informed, I have an iPod Touch), but come on Palm, get your hardware QA fixed.
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
Well, as someone who has used both, I'd have to disagree. I've been a PPC/WM user for years, and generally like HTC's products. But after upgrading to the HTC Fuze (Touch Pro) the day they were released last November, I've had enough of them. I've always had to tinker with WM an awful lot to get it working like I want. I've installed a ton of custom ROM's from xda, even played with kitchens and cooking my own, and have developed apps myself for WM.
I broke down and got an iPhone 3GS, and despite not liking a whole lot about Apple except for iPods, I love my iPhone and wish I had ditched WM a long time ago. The user experience is 10x better. HTC's touch interface is an improvement over vanilla WM, but still lags WAAAY behind the iPhone. The screen quality, both visual quality and touch experience, are just way better on the iPhone, despite the Fuze having a higher resolution. Most of the apps you mention, including TomTom, are now available for the iPhone, and honestly, despite being an "app whore," I've found iPhone versions of just about everything I used on WM devices. The only thing missing for me is a JRE, and that's due to Apple's license regarding bytecode interpreters. I'm not interested in jailbreaking, as I had enough with hacking WM. I just want a reliable smartphone that works well out of the box.
The iPhone isn't perfect -- I don't like the fact I can't run background apps, must use a Mac for development, and I really dislike Objective-C -- but overall I'm still happier than I ever was with a Windows Mobile device. In fact, as further testament to how much the iPhone appealed to me: despite being in the cross-platform software development business for decades, I managed to avoid buying a Mac for anything. Within a week of getting my iPhone, I had to order myself a Mac Mini just to have a platform for hacking around on the thing. As even *further* testament, my wife the technophobe has always hated my WM phones but as soon as she saw and tried out my iPhone, she had to have one too. Say what you will about Apple (and I often do), but they know how to nail the user experience better than anything Microsoft does. So while the geek/engineer in me pretty much dislikes Apple, the consumer in me recognizes and understands their market success.
I'm not sure what you're referring to as far as vendor lock-in goes. There's nothing stopping anyone from making any of the apps I'm hoping to see for the Pre, it's just a matter of time so far. WebOS is new, I can't reasonably expect every application I want to be ready and waiting immediately on it's release.
My understanding is that the eReader will be out for the Pre sometime soon. The XM/Sirius app is so far Apple only (no luck for your WinMo device there either), and I'm hoping that the platform gains enough traction to get Skype's interest.
The Pre does have an App-Catalog, which is similar to the Apple App-Store, but there are actually far more "homebrew" apps available from other sources, which are generally free and so far I've had no problem getting or installing. Actually, they've been easier to install than apps were on my WinMo Motorola Q or Compaq iPaq. No ActiveSync to deal with, or hunting down and hoping for a stand-alone cab file.
As for getting features WinMo has had for years, I'm not sure what you mean. I've been using WinMo from Casio's first colour Cassiopia, up to retiring my iPaq and Moto Q last year. There's not a thing I find myself missing. Maybe the next iteration of WinMo will be more interesting, but I think Palm did a seriously nice job here.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
LogicMail. Open source loves you (it's a great program)!
Quack, quack.
As a BlackBerry Curve user, here are the things I find most annoying about the phone:
Does anyone know if BlackBerry are addressing some or all of these issues?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
And of course this gets modded down too. Hey mods, blow me
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm currently on an LG WinMo phone, and I'll be willing to submit to any kind of lock-in for my next phone, just give me something that WORKS, which my current phone doesn't:
1- it locks up daily. I'm missing important calls because my phone locks up for no reason. And then takes longer than my PC to reboot.
2- connecting my phone to my PC with the SD card in "USB drive" mode usually requires a reboot, or several, for the PC to see the card, and then again when disconnecting the phone, for the phone to see it
3- the user interface is awful. It makes me miss a mouse and keyboard, and waste oodles of time aiming carefully at interface elements that don't belong on a phone.
4- there's no way to force it to use wifi when available, it sometimes (Java...) insists on connecting though 3G, or not at all.
5- WinMo does not even have a tool to format SD cards, so you must buy aPC card reader. It does have a "windows update" tool, which doesn't work...
I hate closed systems a la Apple even more than I dislike Microsoft, but next time around, I'll put all my ideals in my back pocket, and get the most reliable, easiest to use phone wherever it comes from. I Hope Android gets good enough by then, but if it has to ba Apple, Blackberry, S60, Maemo... I don't care.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Nicholas - you're a smarter guy than I'll ever be but on this you're wrong. It's the hardware - it's sexy. It's thin, almost all screen, and all touch.
Something is amiss, I've also noticed many unnecessary "Troll" and "Redundant" mods in other articles. I'm thinking its either a database cock-up or a bunch of sockpuppets simultaneously received mod points.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Try this with the iPhone... it is a GSM phone but this does not work (you need to call the carrier). This is relevant as the new blackberry is trying to compete with the iPhone. In fact, SIM locking is very common in the US and not limited to the iPhone (though the iPhone has the most restrictive implementation).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
3g CDMA RIM devices use SIM cards.
Seems a troll, but VZW's is head and shoulders above AT&T and all other cell phone companies (regardless of technology) are just bit players.
The moderation system on Slashdot was seriously broken when they abandoned the old meta-moderation system in favour of the current "is this a good post?" system. This has enabled people to abuse their moderation privileges by hitting posts they don't like with Troll and Redundant mods with impunity. At least with the old system, abuse like this would become apparent after a few meta-mods disagreed with the original moderation. I don't know if any effort is currently being made to identify people who abuse the system, but given frequency of the kind of thing you identified in this thread, it doesn't look like it.
I don't know if anything can really be done in the long run. People with time on their hands will find a way to abuse the system, presumably by creating numerous accounts to increase the frequency they have access to mod points. My response has been to browse at -1 and stop participating in the moderation system (mostly because I don't have the time to do a proper job of it) and to try to not get too worked up about it, but it's frustrating.
Really, at this point I think Slashdot should just abandon the moderation system altogether, but I suppose it's good for the users to have the choice to use it if they like.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Naaah, it's my fault, really. Any thread that I bother to get involved in is almost always going to be contentious.
So remember kids, if you see my UID, run away if you value your karma!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
it takes a 90 second phone call to support
they will switch it over
several tools thanks to Verizon
Sure, the Verizon network is happy to take your money and switch your phone for you. But that is not convenient in a multiuser corporate environment where there may be many business issued phones that need to be available constantly for traveling employees.
And if you are an individual user on the Verizon network, and you just broke your phone and need a cheap replacement, what can you do? Nothing. You get to go dish out full price for a new phone to Verizon because there is virtually no market for used CDMA phones. Many pawn shops won't even touch used CDMA or TDMA phones.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Einsturzende Neubauten, Minor Threat, Sex Pistols, Subhumans, Throbbing Gristle, Big Black...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
... 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...
When I was on verizon, all it took to swap phones was to enter the new ID into my account online. I could switch phones anytime with no problems.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Agreed, I just got a Pre and I'm very happy. What a loaded summary.
If I could just swap phones as needed during the course of the day.
It gives you one phone number which when called would ring all your phones. Then you can use whatever phone depending on your activity at the moment. As a matter of fact when I get home from work, I would switch an active call from my cell phone to my home phone without missing a beat if I ever need to cut down on mobile minutes.
My understanding was that the original Blackberry storm was widely panned as being slow buggy and generally unusable. The Palm pre on the other hand has been said by many reviewers I have read to be solid and the only real competitor to the iPhone. By the way I own neither.