Hey everyone, Jon Rettinger from Jon4Lakers.com and I want to give you my initial impression of the Blackberry Storm and have one since early Thursday morning and I haven’t enough time to really give it a thorough review but I do want to give you my initial impressions. I did a comparison video with the iPhone and with this video is going to be just about the Storm and let it stand on its own legs.
So first thing running on Verizon’s network, well, this is going to vary from your location. I've been very impressed with the Verizon’s network. I have used them in probably eight years and call quality is clear. I hadn’t had a single drop call and their EV-DO network when they have strength is almost is as fast as Wi-Fi and I'm very impressed with the network. Well, it’s really going to vary. It’s my impressions of the call quality on the device that has been absolutely fantastic.
So one thing to know about the Blackberry is it traditionally made non-touch screen devices. What they have done with the Storm is adapt their operating system. I'm not go into numbers of operating systems what they did is they adapted it for a touch screen meaning it wasn’t initially made for a touch screen device and often times that shows. Menus can be a little bit laggy, moving through menus can be laggy, selecting settings can be laggy. I'm going to log in a minute but it definitely shows that this has not developed as a touch screen device. It was more adapted for a touch screen device so that are some of the negatives.
One thing that I really have to say I do love and I'm getting very used to is the click screen on the Blackberry Storm and I think you really see that where it does depress just a little bit when you're typing or pushing in this sort of button on it. It feels very similar to the track pad on the MacBook as if they’re almost identical and it really is intuitive. I know there has been some concerns that you can't type as fast because you have to wait for the screen to pop back up but that has not been an issue for me. It pops almost instantaneously.
Although a concern I do have is possibly does getting around the outside of the phone when it is pushed in but it seems like a room to carry around and there appears to be a small membrane around it. The build quality of the device is fantastic. It is solid. It feels good in the hand. The back is made up of metal. It has got a gorgeous 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus and video recording capabilities and MMS
It has got a full HTML browser and of course it has got the Blackberry email system. It runs email system is fantastic. I forgot how good it was. I haven’t used the Blackberry about a year and a half and it is unbelievable, push is instantaneous. It is quick. It is fast. I really couldn’t be happier with email aspect of it.
So one of the gripes I do have with the phone. I think one of the ways where it shows that it wasn’t initially made for a touch screen is with the accelerometer. It is quite laggy. So I'm going to give you guys a quick demonstration on that here. So we’re going to turn this on. The device is just simply lock, turn it and there is a 2-second delay and that is not so bad occasionally in the delay, can get twice that long. So let me go ahead and show another example here that I may unlock the device. The accelerometer is something that you have to use very often on the phone, a little bit laggy but not terribly bad. So let me show you a website. It happens to have Jon4Lakers.com keyed up here. Let me show you the accelerometer again on the website.
I've made the brightness as low as I can so I hope you guys can see that. So it is not so bad. This time I'm going to give you another example here. Let’s go back to the home screen. I need the Blackberry menu button. There is a little bit of delay. We’re going to push that. It takes about a second for it to pop up. Now I'm going to compare that to let’s say the Blackberry Bold which the operating system was made for the device like this.
So I want to hit the Blackberry button right there and you see this instantaneous pop-up, scrolling to the menus and it comes immediately. It is not a big issue and the lag is not that substantial. When you are using it often you're hitting a lot of buttons it definitely becomes noticeable. So that is one thing to be concerned about. If the phone does a have visual voicemail service which is quite nice and it looks similar to that other phone that I'm not going to mention but visual voicemail is great. It tells you who is calling.
One thing that I've heard about the device and the reason that there were a little bit of surges on launch day research and motion also known as RAM had plenty of devices ready to go but there was a glitch in the operating system they are getting ready to release. It actually have to re-flushed all the phones about a few days before released and obviously that is quite time consuming so the word as many initially out for launch day as it should have been.
So that means is that this device is running an older version of a firmware. Now what is okay about that is that this phone is over the air upgradeable meaning the operating system can be upgrade over the air. So I'm not that concerned. I think things like the lagging and the accelerometer slowed down will be fixed with an over air update. This is the first time it has been released and it does have a fair amount way to go before it is perfected but is a great device. It can play music. It can play videos. The screen is gorgeous. It can view your pictures. I've got to say I really have been very happy with the device. I actually have been using it as my primary phone since Thursday and I've been very happy with it.
Now am I going to switch to use it as my primary device? That is yet to be seen but I can say that I'm enjoying using it right now. So guys stay tune to the channel on the website for some more reviews and some more thoughts and musings on the Blackberry storm. I have other phones kind in the dock here that I want to review and share it with you guys as well. But I want to give you guys just my initial impressions of the Blackberry Storm. If you're with Verizon or you're thinking about switching I recommend you going to Verizon Store and playing with the phone. It is really not for everybody but it is for a lot of people.
Texting on it is very quick. The keyboard can be a little bit squarely. It is hard, when you push the button you get a little blue light that glows but you can always hover where that blue light is coming from so you frequently have mistypes but that just may be because I'm not used to the keyboard yet. So I'm going to hold a judgment on that and I haven’t gotten used to the short type keyboard very quickly.
So guys if you want to get the phone you know like I said, go check it out at the store and make your own decision. I'm not here to convince one way or another just to help educate. So guys Jon Rettinger with Jon4Lakers.com. Be sure to check out the website and if you want some exclusive content be sure to follow me on Twitter@www.Twitter.com/Jon4Lakers. I hope you enjoyed this initial overview and musings and thoughts about the device and I'm off to dinner and I’ll see you guys you later. Bye.
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