Blackberry Storm

About 4 months ago, I got a Blackberry Storm through work. My old Pearl was dying - the scroll wheel wasn't working too well - and when I asked about fixing it, I was told that with our warranty service it was easier to just get a new one.

The Storm looks cool. It's obviously meant to compete with the iPhone in terms of user experience. Nice big icons, touch scrolling, and so on. But as is so often the case with Apple imitators, it just doesn't measure up.

The biggest issue I have with the Storm is speed. The response time is very slow at times - not always, but often enough that I notice it. It's especially bad when trying to type on the on-screen keyboard. I often have to slow down to avoid missing letters or accidentally deleting something.

The touch screen is a bit strange in that you have to press the screen down to make a selection - kind of like clicking the mouse. Doing this is not very precise, which is fine for selecting big icons but makes it very difficult to edit text. Since there's no other navigation option, I sometimes find myself sending out emails with known errors because it's too hard to correct them without rewriting the whole thing.

Battery usage is pretty bad. Unless you turn off the wireless connection (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone), you're good for about one full day before your battery runs dry. This is fine if you remember to plug it in every night, but forget once and you're stuck. On the bright side, it does charge fine with a USB cord plugged into your computer, so charging at work isn't a big deal.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend a Storm right now. The next version could be much better with a few improvements, most notably fixing the occasional slowdowns. If you're considering one, I'd wait for version 2.