Garage Sale 2 Ebay

So I decided I should review my newest toy for you guys.

Features and Design

The first thing you’ll notice about the Storm, is that the handset is

somewhat heavy and bulky. RIM chose to include an extended battery with this

model, presumably to appease both consumers and business users who want to: A.

watch a lot of movies and listen to music or B. surf the Web in their lonely

hotel rooms all evening. Translation: Size-wise, it’s a beast. The Storm weighs

almost 5.5 ounces (5.46 to be exact) and measures 4.4” x 2.4” x .55” (LxWxD), or

almost a half-inch thick. Read: It’s a rock in a pants pocket and doesn’t work

that well in your shirt pocket either, however if you are more interested in

battery life than weight, this will not bother you..

There are just a handful of hardware buttons on the Storm: A phone dial and

end call button; the menu key ; escape key; a voice dial button on the left

side; a camera button on the right side; a lock and a mute button on top; and

volume controls that are located on the right side. Both the lock and mute

buttons are easy to miss because they are recessed into the casing.

Setup and Use

Here is what you get for the low, low price of $200 (plus Verizon Wireless

contract): The Storm includes a 3.2 megapixel camera; GPS with voice navigation;

1GB of on-board memory; a battery that lasts six hours; a bright 3.25” 480×360

color display that supports over 65,000 colors; Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo audio;

GSM and EV-DO Rev A; a microSD slot; and a standard size 3.5mm headphone jack (earbud

headphones included).

So, how could you go wrong with all of these features? For starters, the main

issue with the Storm is that the touchscreen is very hard to use, even with some

practice. Be aware: When you poke an on-screen prompt, you are pressing down on

the entire screen as if it were a button itself (almost like clicking on a

mouse), and the phone is registering where you prod, which is a bit odd at

first, but I soon began to love.

Moving right along, if you turn the phone to the side, the Storm will switch

to landscape mode automatically (using the accelerometer) with a full keyboard.

RIM offers a few neat tricks – you can hover your finger over the cursor to

“pick it up” and move it to another part of a field and enjoy a simple way to

search for email addresses. The Storm does not support multi-touch gestures,

however, so you can’t zoom in by spreading out two fingers on the screen. To

zoom in, you instead tap the screen twice and, to zoom out, you press Escape..

Extra Features and Functions

You’re in for a treat, as the Storm is a very capable smartphone – one of the

best ever made, in fact.

Network

It runs on the EV-Do Rev A network, which means (at least in the areas we

tested the device) speeds approached 1 Mbps for Internet browsing and e-mail. We

pulled up a YouTube video (at m.youtube.com) and had one playing in seconds,

albeit in low-resolution, though, in a sweet turn, there were no pauses or

annoying stutters. Other sites such as ESPN.com and IGN.com loaded

lightning-fast as well, even though the Storm (unlike the iPhone) does not

support Adobe Flash. No matter – text and graphics still loaded quickly and

accurately in the fully HTML-aware browser, even for rich content sites and

video sites like YouTube.

Camera

Also bear in mind that the phone’s camera is a major plus. We took a series

of pictures inside and out and were impressed with the results. The Storm goes

into a quick auto-focus mode that helps make sure images are clear, and for

inside shots, there’s even a handy light that illuminates the subject matter.

Whereas the iPhone and even the Nokia N96’s photos look muddy and dull, shots on

the Storm looked bright and clear. Videos also appeared bright and crisp, and it

was great recording them to the handset’s spacious 1GB internal memory.

GPS

GPS capability worked perfectly during a long road trip too. The voice

prompts were clear and accurate, utilizing Verizon’s VZ Navigator program. You

can even look up nearby movies, find routes and look at maps, avoid traffic

delays, and send a message from the GPS client with an automatic note stating

when you will arrive at a meeting. We also liked that, when you click up or down

on the volume buttons, the GPS client changes the voice by gradation – dwindling

from loud voice to medium voice and so on.

Call Quality

More importantly, calls on the Storm sounded very clear and tonally rich from

our perspective. The receiving end – e.g. the person we were talking to – said

the call sounded a bit digital or robotic. That’s typical of BlackBerry devices

though, which use a high-quality speaker and an average-quality microphone for

talking. Talk time lasted for two days of casual use, and about six hours of

near-constant use. Honestly, it’s an amazing feat, because the iPhone and

G1 will die if you use them consistently for just a few hours in one sitting. By

comparison, we used the Storm all morning to talk to friends, browse the Web and

even get driving directions and only one bar on the battery icon was gone,

AMAZING

Media Capabilities

As a media phone, the Storm beats the G1 by far, and ties iPhone’s celebrated

multimedia capabilities. You can quickly load music and movies onto the device

using BlackBerry media management software – it even supports file conversion

from iTunes. We loaded 200 music files onto a MicroSD card and they sounded

clear and crisp using the included earbud headphones. Even the external speaker

on the Storm is not very “BlackBerry-ish” in that it is actually worth using.

(Note that the G1 doesn’t even have a video player and is somewhat limited for

music as well, although it is very easy to buy Amazon MP3 files.) What we didn’t

like about the Storm for media, however, is that there is no Apple iTunes

equivalent – a really powerful music and movie organizer that would let you dump

tracks onto the device with ease.

Conclusion

There’s is a bit of improvement that could be made on the touch screen

keyboard.  The Storm would be winning awards for call quality, media

support, miscellaneous extras, a high-quality camera and built-in GPS – after

all, it is an uber-phone at a decently low price. But know this before taking

the plunge: Thumb-punching maniac typists may have a bit of a learning

experience to get back up to full speed..

Pros:

• Amazing call quality

• High quality camera

• Built-in GPS

• Good media support

• Lots of extras

Cons:

• Typing can be difficult

• Interface was slow a few times

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