I reckon I'm dead good for typing on...
Those of you that have been reading my mini-mini-reviews of devices (the ‘five-minute fiddle’ series), will know that I’ve tried a bunch of devices recently – albeit in some cases for a very limited amount of time – hence the ‘five-minute’ part 🙂
So, devices I have checked out are the Nokia N96, Sony Ericsson C905, and BlackBerry Bold. But yesterday I got hold of the BlackBerry Storm – for a little while – and here’s what I thought:
- build quality – felt okay in the hand -actually, a bit too light for the size that it is – feels like it should be a bit heavier, like a solid lump of metal, to give that ‘premium device’ aura…
- key layout – there aren’t any (well, many), it’s a touchscreen 🙂
- Speed of O/S – Um, a bit laggy if I were honest
- Battery – well the unit I got hold of had low battery popping up. I am going to assume that was because it had been used a lot that day. However…… you never know!
- O/S ease of use – well the UI looks nice at the top level (homescreen), and sub-level one (main menu), but I couldn’t get to grips with moving about in it, which brings me nicely on to….
- touchscreen – er… sucked. Yep, I couldn’t get on with it at all. This whole clickthrough concept, where the screen moves, I found most unsettling. it’s like the whole screen is mounted on springs, and feels like you are typing on a wobble-board! Typing felt strange.
- Email writing – well after some persisting I got the letters I wanted – key spacing good, but that touchscreen unsettled me. Compare with iPhone, which I had the same amount of time to try, and was at one with, within 5 mins. I assume that the push email function works perfectly.
- Auto-screen-rotate – sucked too – very slow and laggy, not animated
- media handling –no time to check 🙁
I’m sorry to say, this device didn’t impress at all, and the touch is just nowhere near the iphone. consider that if the screen is a moving part and depresses when you type each letter, how much durability is that going to need to have for a heavy texter/emailer….?
Compare overall with the Bold, and I’m disappointed 🙁
Overall rating: Disappointed! 🙁
Grade: C- / D+