I have always been a fan of blackberry, all my friends and family own pc’s oe have office type jobs. With the instant email function I can stay in touch with them all without extra charge to myself or to those who wish to email me.
First let’s talk about the price plans available. As you may be aware the blackberry storm is exclusively available to Vodafone customers only, so if you wish this to be your next mobile, you must either transfer your number to Vodafone, be a customer already, or purchase a new contract.
Remember everything in this review is accurate to date.
Now to date you can get the blackberry storm for free from £35 a month on a 18 month contract or £30 on a 24 month contract. On both the 35 and 30 contracts you get 200 minutes and unlimited texts (3000 – nothing is unlimited) unlimited internet (500MB) and unlimited email (6MB - I was told in shop).
For each £5 increase you will receive more mins all the other inclusive remain the same.
For me, blackberry is the perfect phone, it allows me to keep in touch with clients via instant email, which means as soon as someone sends an email, it is delivered through a web of cables, routers, and switches, reaches Vodafone and within seconds is straight on the device.
If you are looking for an mobile email device a blackberry is the way forward and like me I’m sure you won’t be very disappointed.
Now looking at the phone front on, it is fully touch screen so the only buttons you do see on the device are the volume control on
the right side, the camera button on the right, a quick access button on the left, lock and mute at the top, and call app back and end/power at the bottom front.
The screen like I said is a touch screen, however it is a new type of touch screen where by the screen itself actually presses into the system, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. The screen senses movement of the finger by what I believe is heat, but an action on the screen must be confirmed with a click (pressing in the screen itself). Although this is neat little feature and over time you discover that it is very useful and very well thought out. It does have its downsides, there is a small gap margin around the screen allowing access to small bits of plastic, metal dust etc and once something falls behind the screen and you are clicking away, it doesn’t sound very reassuring that the device is going to last. It can also get quite noisy especially when you are in a quiet room trying to write out a quick email or text.
Let’s talk about the system itself, upon starting up the device and charging it for the first time I noticed it took a considerable amount of time to boot up. As I have noticed with blackberry’s this is a common thing, but it is only when you remove the battery and re insert it. At most I have known it to take up to 5 mins.
If you switch the system off using the red phone (holding it down) then when you wish to start the system back up press the red phone again, start-up is fairly instant. (although you don’t have to hold down the button to switch the system back on, quite inconvenient if something in your pocket starts it back up.)
Despite the whole easy to switch on and the fact that blackberry phones don’t like being off, there is a function within the phone which allows you to switch the network off, (not the whole of Vodafone of course, although that would be very cool). This means having your blackberry on although the phone remains disconnected from the network.
To set up your blackberry for email can be quite a complicated process, there is an online application you must visit to get your Vodafone email address. On the blackberry storm however this is accessible via the phones help menu, and is all fairly automatic.
Now another downside I have noticed was that the email address is quite long, it is something like user@instantemail.vodafone.co.uk which im sure you can agree is quite ugly, however you can purchase your own email address, or use your own as long as it supports email forwarding. Read more on this if you wish.
You can also access several pop3 and imap email accounts although these are not as instant as mail forwarding or sending an email direct to the Vodafone address.
Now the phone comes with a built in 1GB memory, great for storing photos, videos, music, ringtones, documents etc
It is also plenty of space to save all those emails and text messages. You can expand the memory using the micro-SD slot next to the battery up to 16GB (or maybe more now). You do not have to remove the battery to get the card in.
Now music wise, I don’t think anything compares to and iPod, or some Sony phones and mp3 players, but the blackberry come close and quite neatly into the category of music phone.
Blackberry or RIM (who make the phone) have come up with a new software, which I think is available on the blackberry bold now, which when opened via the media options, you are greeted with a lovely user interface allowing you to select all songs, artists, albums, genre and of course playlists. These options you would find on most mp3 players now days. Selecting music and storing it onto the phone has never been simpler.
However I have noticed one flaw! When the songs change (one ends another starts) the volume seems to control its self, sometimes it will start very loud or very quiet. However I do believe this is a software error and hope that RIM are sorting it out.
The battery life seems to be ok with music as well, I have managed a full day with music playing and enough battery to last until I got home. I have heard that the iPhones battery life is quite poor, so if it is battery life you require a blackberry is the way forward, I have known this phone to last up to 4 days, in use and uncharged.
In all respects the camera is rubbish. The image quality seems ok but the delay between pressing the button and capture is insanely long (up to 2 seconds). This I’m sure is unacceptable if you will be using the camera. However it is sporting a 3.2 MP camera and the settings from smaller resolutions can be selected which may make the camera faster, I haven’t tried.
The camera support an option to save straight to the memory card, so no worries there. Has flash option, and image stability options.
The camera also supports geotagging, which is to find you GPS position and save it to the image, allowing you to see where the image was taken either on the phone or when its transferred to your PC.
The phone also has a video camera which I haven’t seen on a blackberry before, which is quite buggy as well, I have known it to freeze when finishing a video, and I have lost a few and it’s corrupted some. I once held the phone up for 7 mins at a concert and at the end was disappointed to see that my efforts were in ruin. The video corrupted.
Viewing images is a better process than taking them; you are met with another nice screen, which puts all your images into a grid allowing you to see them all. Or if you have organised them into folders you can access those as well. Very nice when looking over old memories.
The video player is fantastic, I have never had any problems with it, and the video quality it can present is superb. Some phones have been known to crash when faced with large MP4 videos but the blackberry triumphs. I have got films, episodes of my favourite programs and music videos, and have never been let down. No problems here.
As well as being a email phone it doe support many other features, such as contact book, calendar, task, clock with stopwatch, timer and alarm, the clock also has a bedside function which makes the phone act like a real clock. Calculator, voice notes and voice dialling.
There is a new feature I noticed on the blackberry and that is application center, you can download certain applications straight from the center to your phone. The center is quite low on applications however, it currently only contains
Flickr – photo uploading Facebook – social networking Yahoo and MSN messengers AOL and ICQ messengers Google Talk Google Maps – compatible with the built in GPS Youtube Vodafone find and Go Vodafone Live Blackberry Maps
I forgot to mention that the phone has GPS built in, and I have known some GPS devices to take a while to warm up, the blackberry storms built in GPS is very quick and while supporting googlemaps will ensure you will never get lost again. The GPS its self is very responsive and very quick to start up.
Should you buy it,
Yes, if you want fast email, text messaging, document editors, media browser, mobile internet and email, long battery life
No, if you don’t need email, you want to take pictures
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Designed to satisfy the needs of both consumers and business customers the BlackBerry more
Storm smartphone combines the powerful communications features global connectivity and personal productivity advantages of the BlackBerry platform with a revolutionary touch-screen technology that dramatically enhances the touch interface and enables easy and precise typing. The world's first "clickable" touch-screen responds much like a physical keyboard and also supports single-touch multi-touch and gestures for intuitive and efficient application navigation. The BlackBerry Storm smartphone comes with an innovative touch-screen that actually depresses ever so slightly when the screen is pressed. The user distinctly feels the screen being pressed and released with a gentle "click" similar to the feeling of a key on a physical keyboard or a button on a mouse. The "clickable" touch-screen gives the user positive confirmation that they have made a selection and the result is a dramatically enhanced touch interface and a highly-intuitive typing experience. In addition to the familiar navigation keys ("phone " "menu" and "escape") that are common to other BlackBerry smartphones the new BlackBerry Storm adds support for multi-touches taps slides and other touch-screen gestures so customers can easily highlight scroll pan and zoom for smooth navigation. The BlackBerry Storm smartphone also features a built-in accelerometer allowing its touch-screen to automatically switch between landscape mode and portrait mode as the user rotates the handset - RIM's SureType keyboard layout is available in portrait mode and a full QWERTY keyboard layout is available in landscape mode. Other relevant features such as cut and paste are only a touch away for the ultimate smartphone experience.
With a unique touch screen and cutting-edge multimediacapabilities the BlackBerry Storm more
smartphone makes a greatimpression as you travel across town or to almost any corner of theworld.Move your mouse over the glowing hotspots to the left todiscover the g
With a unique touch screen and cutting-edge multimediacapabilities the BlackBerry Storm more
smartphone makes a greatimpression as you travel across town or to almost any corner of theworld.Move your mouse over the glowing hotspots to the left todiscover the g
Advantages: Stylish, sleek. Great screen, and loads of super preinstalled internet ready apps. Disadvantages: Slow when switching between applications, no Wi-Fi! Only 1GB on-board RAM.
Advantages: The click-screen button is great for fast emailing and texting. Good quality screen & display Disadvantages: Poor battery life, unreliable 3G network, multiple click-screen problems, slow reaction camera
Advantages: Good sound quality alround, video play back, 3g/gprs data stream good and constant Disadvantages: would really depend on user, ive found none..
adognamedpiles 10.06.2009 ·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: off topic
Review of BlackBerry Storm 9500
Advantages: Good sound quality alround, video play back, 3g/gprs data stream good and constant Disadvantages: would really depend on user, ive found none..
adognamedpiles 10.06.2009 ·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: off topic
Review of BlackBerry Storm 9500
Mar 26th, 2009
very helpful by (100%):
