I’m toying with the idea of getting a Storm. I’d love to get an iPhone, but staying with Verizon as a carrier is non-negotiable for me. I don’t really care about “push email” but a large display and a good web browser experience are important to me.
The initial reviews of the Storm really complained about the lagginess of switching apps, accelerometer, etc, as well as other bugs. Have the firmware upgrades fixed these problems? What firmware version should I look for?
Also, how is the keyboard? I’m particularly concerned about portrait mode, which has multiple letters mapped to each “key”. (I currently have a treo with a full keyboard.)
Let me hear your impressions: good, bad, and ugly!
My Storm is my first Smart Phone. I love it. But then I don’t have anything to compare it to. It just amazes me.
I also needed to stick with Verizon.
You get a full keyboard in landscape mode. I’m still not sure which one I like better, the ‘multi’ key or the regular one. I don’t text, so I don’t use the keyboard that much. I just have all my bookmarks preset for the sites that I like to visit. Some are better than others.
I really like having my email pushed to my phone. Along with weather alerts and such.
I uploaded the firmware patches, and really didn’t notice any differences. But then, switching from landscape to portrait never seemed slow.
Again, take this with a grain of salt as I’ve never had a phone like this before.
I was in your position a little while ago - interested in the Verizon Storm with similar items that were important. I really recommend playing with one in the store, making sure that the firmware has been upgraded, before making a decision. Sometimes things like “a good web browser experience” can be subjective, with some people absolutely horrified by the experience and some people not noticing anything wrong.
I was very keen on the Verizon Storm until I actually used it in the store. The sheer number of interface bugs (lag, slow accelerometer, etc) made it practically unusable to me. Aside from that, in my opinion the web experience does not even come close to the iPhone. The iPhone multi-touch pinching gestures and more make it a very intuitive experience, whereas the Storm felt very clumsy.
I hope the firmware upgrades fixed some of these issues, and will probably try it out again in the future, but my initial poor experience really put me off. Bad business, Verizon!
I’ve played with two of them and I’ve found them interesting but no where near as intuitive as my iPhone. I also noticed the considerable lag in launching applications, switching to landscape mode, etc. Granted, I am biased to the iPhone so I’ll offer the following: I know one friend and one acquantence who have bought Storms and both have taken them back within 2 weeks.
I picked mine on up launch day, and I’ve been loving it. I’d agree that they should have worked some kinks out from day one though. There have been 3 OS updates, and they’ve been steadily working out the bugs. The experience of using the phone has improved considerably.
This being my third Blackberry, the click screen has taken some getting used to. My typing has sped up, but nowhere to the level of a hardware keyboard. I look at it this way. The slower typing is one step back, but the screen is insanely gorgeous (12% higher pixel density than iphone), and all the other features put it 10 steps forward.