// December 16th, 2008 // View Comments // Blackberry
I’ve had the Blackberry Storm since the morning it came out in the US. I was excited to see what all the hype was about, and since I never went to the store early to test one, I wasn’t even sure what to expect. So far, it has been a very good device. After the first update, the device became substantially better and more usable. I didn’t quite expect so many issues with lag and speed upon arrival of this device. I thought RIM was a company that didn’t push devices out before they were ready, and with the Storm I do think that was the case.
My previous phone was a Blackberry 8830 World Edition. This was the top of the line blackberry, with gloabal roaming features, and a business oriented nature(no camera, a bit larger size, more expensive). I had always liked Blackberries for being fast, email and web access, and the built in qwerty keyboard. After getting the Storm, two of the three things I liked Blackberry’s for in the first place were missing. The device was slow or laggy most of the time, and the physical qwerty keyboard was gone.
Luckily, the SureType keyboard with tactile feedback has grown on me. I’m quite accustomed to typing on this device now. The software does have a bit of trouble if I start to type as fast as possible, but overall for the amount of typing I do, the three keyboard options give me exactly what I want. I wasn’t so sure about the giant ‘click screen’ on the Storm when I got it, but it has actually helped me to be more sure of each keystroke, even if it does slow me down slightly.
There have been many tips and tricks to help speed up the device and its response times. I have tried just about everything that I could find other users recommending. I uninstalled VZ Navigator, Visual Voicemail, and any other applications that I would never use. This does seem to speed up the device substantially. I also regularly do battery pulls, or a soft reset using the softreset free software. This clears out the RAM, and refreshes the entire system. I also did this on my Blackberry 8830, but have found myself doing it more with this device. I have also played around with the Keyboard settings which I currently have set as: Key Rate=Fast, Tap Interval=100, Hover Period=300, Swipe Sensitivity=High 6.
Enough about the gripes, I do enjoy this phone, and I’ll share with you why. The hardware on the Storm is fantastic. The device feels substantial(and a bit heavy if you like that), the buttons are well designed, they went with minimal exterior features, and it really makes the Storm look professional. The screen is fantastic. It is large, and I have even watched a few movies wide screen with a set of headphones on. The headphone jack is a standard size, so you don’t need to worry about getting an adapter to listen to some tunes. The speaker is very loud. Louder then I would ever need. It makes me wonder why laptop speakers are so quiet, when this device can pump out such loud sound. I really like the new media player that this OS has, it works well, and looks quite a bit better then the old version my 8830 had.
The applications included all work very well. The Blackberry Maps even will use your GPS coordinates, and works extremely fast for GPS device. The Microsoft Office “To Go” programs are a nice addition, and I have tested out editing excel and word documents on the device. The Storm comes with two games, our old friend, BrickBreaker, as well as a new game for helping you to learn the keyboard – WordMole.
In conclusion, the Storm is a great phone. If the App store ever becomes a reality, this device will become a great competitor to the iPhone and similar. Right now, it’s a great blackberry. Offering the coolest technology, 8GB of expandable storage, a large screen, and bragging rights.
-DPollitt
Have you ever forgot that one Word document back home when you were at work? Or maybe you just have that one song remix on your desktop and you want to send it to your friend from his house. Remote desktop access is what you need. Windows does have a built in option if you are running Windows XP Professional or Vista Ultimate, but it typically requires a bit of networking and firewall knowledge and setup. Theres a free option out there, that requires essentially no setup or technical knowledge and works fantasticly. LogMeIn Free allows you to acces any Mac or PC that you install the software on from any browser. You aren’t even required to install any software for basic access.
So I’ve been giving Last.fm a shot for the past week or so. It’s kind of like a Pandora meets Facebook with Netflix like recommendations built in. It’s a good suppliment to your new music hunger, and I have sucessfully found some good new stuff on it already. The system allows you to sync up your iPod, iTunes, or even Songbird(Open source iTunes replacement) to share your listening habits.
