Storm Getting Slammed?

[Rene Ritchie]

Wow, even when making fun of the Storm from concept, I never imagined reviews like this!

From David Pogue, New York Times (via Daring Fireball):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/te...pagewanted=all

In short, trying to navigate this thing isn’t just an exercise in frustration — it’s a marathon of frustration.

Now, I wouldn’t come down this hard on some product — especially one that was so eagerly anticipated, customers lined up at dawn on the day of its release — without getting a second, third and fourth opinion. And I’m telling you, there wasn’t a soul who tried this machine who wasn’t appalled, baffled or both.

And that’s before they discovered that the Storm doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

From Stephen Fry (British comedian and former partner of House's Huge Laurie) (Via Giz):

Been playing with the BB Storm. Shockingly bad. I mean embarrassingly awful. Such a disappointment. Rushed out unfinished. What a pity.

Yes, I blame n'works more than RIM. Problems are terrible lag: inaccurate t'screen, awful, slow and fiddly text input. I SO wanted to like it.

Plus the GPS maps won't work - issue with BIS connections. I see from forums postings this is widespread in the UK. iPhone killer? Ha!

Anyone here actually pick one up? Anything to these reviews, or are they unfairly negative?

[JFSikora]

Now I don't have one, nor have I even touched one but the issues listed above (to be fair) all sound like a firmware update "could" fix. That whole click screen really turns me off on the device.

[Alienwhere]

Well, from what the commercials would have you believe, the Storm may actually be the second coming in all its glory, freeing us from the tyranny of all the inadequacies of the iPhone. But in actuality, although I don't know anyone who has one yet, from all the reading I've been doing, the consensus on the device ranges from "meh" to "get it out of my hand before I pitch it into a wall".

I played with a G1 about 2 weeks ago, and while it was neat, it had none of the finish that the iPhone has. I'd like to get my hands on a Storm and see for myself, but frankly, I came from a Curve, and the idea of the BB OS slapped onto a different device and slightly reconfigured to accept touch input does not leave me with a huge amount of confidence. It's almost as though in doing this, RIM is proving that they really shouldn't venture into those fields in which they're not dominant, as counter-intuitive as that might sound to some people. They rule the school with qwerty-based smartphones, they should fix the bloody OS before they try to blow everyone away with hardware gimmicks. The software is where the iPhone shines, and that seems to be missed by RIM devs.

Instead of saying "me-too" they should be saying, "well, that's nice, but how about this instead?".

[Justin]

I haven't gotten to play with a real one, but did use the shell model at a best buy. I have to say the whole click thing is not good. If they could come up with a way to make the screen "soft" where it only clicks down where your finger is then maybe it would be better, but the whole screen click just isn't intuitive at all.

I think it actually would make you type slower because you have to way until the screen pops back up before you can press the next key, when normally you could start depressing the next key as the other one is coming up.

That's one thing about apple, even before I became a user of their products I always thought they were in the top companies (if not the top) of UI development.

[Alienwhere]

Ok, I played with one today. Someone came up to me at work and showed me. I immediately snatched it out of his hand because I had to see it. You know what?

It's AWFUL. I couldn't believe how bad the screen functions were. I mean, it takes the idea of a touch screen and makes it completely unusable. I had better luck working with my old Treo 700wx with a finger than with this thing.

The "click" is gimmicky and feels laborious. I would NEVER want to do it all day long. Plus, the screen slid back and forth like it was loose underneath the housing, and he assured me "it's supposed to do that". It felt totally cheap! I told him to take it back for another one, because that didn't seem right at all.

There was also some tacked-on app-store-esque function, which of course lacked in even the most basic functions, and made me just want to hand it back to him, which I promptly did, saying "pretty cool man" because I didn't want to tell him what I really thought about it. (He might have run away crying.)

Overall, it's by no means in competition for the iPhone's status as top smartphone (and now phone!), and is not even a worthy substitute for a good BlackBerry Curve, or even the Bold, which is a day late and a dollar short, as my mom used to say, when it comes to this race.

[EmEuS]

First let me set the scene. At Jillian's Monday Night Football....fiancee calls so i take my iPhone out and then I year "Oh look its a fag-phone".

Low and behold this guy has a rain....I mean storm......so I go "I see you have a Storm, what is the best quality of your phone. So he said the keyboard "clicking". Now this is one time in my life I wish I had video so I could have recorded this debacle that was him attempting to type. Needless to say he lost his battle. I caught up with him later that night and we switched phones for about 10 minutes.

Guys, this thing is utterly horrible. I mean.....the commercials are inaccurate. The OS is nowhere as near as smooth as they said it is.

I see why they call it a Storm.....you will be swearing up a Storm when you use this thing......

[Leadsled124]

I bought one. i went through 3 in 4 weeks. First week on the first phone and there was so much dust under the click screen that it was hard to read unless you where indoors. Second one no dust, but had all the problems listed above. I was promised updates and they dint want me to return. I got suckered into giving them one more shot and my 3rd was sent to me. Same problems as phone #2. It lags sooo horribly bad, and it was embarrassing when people wanted to check it out and it would freeze up. There is one video movie preview pre installed on the phone. It would out of nowhere just start playing at the most inopportune time and wouldn't respond untill the battery was pulled. <-- oh did i mention the speaker is very loud and clear? lol

Also the bottom of the click screen stops responding. You can feel the "click" get loose over time. And it would crash and restart all the time. i guess memory leaking and when it gets to 20mb or whatever "crash". I timed how long it takes to start up after as well. On some crashes it took slightly over 6 minutes to reboot. Meanwhile the person i had a conversation with thinks i hung up.

After being promised new software updates that didnt change a thing i was stuck with it out of 30day warranty for return. I felt suckered into waiting then they said i was 4 days past 30 day so "tuff luck". I jusmped ship to att and the iPhone 3g and cant believe what i have been missing! BTW im stuck with a $350 ETF from verizon. Im not paying until they reasonably lower the fees.
DO NOT BUY THE STORM!!!

On a side note i have a perfectly like new storm for sale if anyone is interested.

[jhamilton3]

I bought my girlfriend a Storm right after I bought a Bold for myself back in December.

Loved her Storm more than my Bold.. ended up getting the iPhone and definitely like it better than both... no question I'll be sticking with the 3G..

[JFSikora]

Originally Posted by jhamilton3

I bought my girlfriend a Storm right after I bought a Bold for myself back in December.

Loved her Storm more than my Bold.. ended up getting the iPhone and definitely like it better than both... no question I'll be sticking with the 3G..

See I'd take the Bold over the Storm any day. No questions asked.

[hiimhenryyy]

I wonder if Apple just buys phones that are supposed to be "iPhone killers" and throws them on the table for everyone to laugh at. It's honestly embarrassing seeing phones like this put on the market.

I've played with one. The click feature is disgusting (It's a bit better than the vibrate when you touch on the Glyde/Voyager)? I never liked my keys clicking on regular phones, why would I want it on something that was touch.

The "first time" setup took a really long time, and the Verizon helper repeatedly took the phone out of my hand and pressed it various times, and said "Sorry about that." He then asked me "What kind of phone do you currently have on Verizon." I showed him my iPhone 3G and he told me to stick with my phone over the Storm.

I think it was rushed, and could've been a lot better.

And as Bad Ash said, I'd prefer a Bold over the Storm any day also.

That's my 2 cents.