BlackBerry Storm2 9550 Review

Say the word “Blackberry”. The first thing that comes to mind is an elegant young man walking around New York City with his briefcase, sleek and expensive suit, and his – Blackberry Storm2. The Storm2 improves upon the mistakes of the original Storm, while still retaining its good looks, great network, and reasonable price. The look and feel of the Storm2 is a nearly well-crafted experience;  a strong presence, but not intimidating. In simpler words, it has enough solid features to make it the “flagship” BlackBerry. In-depth review after the break. Oh, and better late then never, right? We’ve finally reviewed a Blackberry.

Price as reviewed: $179.99 with 2-year contract on Verizon Wireless.

Full Disclosure: This is a review unit sent in by Research In Motion inc.

Looks and Feel

Any hand can perfectly grapple the Storm2, and it feels very comfortable. The brushed metal on the back provides superior grip, and the added chrome and rubber edgings only help even more. That’s not to say of course that the Storm2 is the best feeling smartphone you’ve ever held. The iPhone 3GS, while it has the habit to be extremely slippery actually feels more stable, and doesn’t have the colossal weight of the Storm2 either. The Storm2 weighs 160 grams, while the 3GS weighs only 135 grams. This 25 gram difference is a difference. Afterwards, the rest of the handset feels like it was designed to be on-the-go, meaning that it fits into most people’s lives. It also can take a beating without any noticeable physical damage.

It’s the best-looking business smartphone besides another Blackberry, which is righteously so much more popular (and better looking) – the Bold 9700.

On any smartphone in the limelight right now you have your usual volume and sleep buttons, but the Storm2 uses 9 different buttons.  On the top left corner you have sleep/power off and on the opposite side a silent button. On the left side you have a single voice command button and USB port; on the right a dedicated camera switch, volume control, and 3.5mm headset jack. The main button set  here is the talk/end functions, menu, and back button, which all have very nice styling, including the same “SurePress” feel the the screen possesses.

SurePress, Keyboard, Sound, and Network

As for those of you who might not know, but most of whom probably do (and should), the Storm2 uses an exclusive technology called SurePress. Translation: a “clickable” “keyboard-like”  “touchscreen”.  Need a better explanation? Imagine this: a touchscreen that has the same clicky feel of any other keyboard that you might use, and that in order to process an action or to type a message, you have to apply pressure and “click” the screen itself. At first it felt extremely awkward, but now I’m much more comfortable with it and it becomes increasingly accurate (at times) to use on the 3.25-inch display with a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels. One of the main faults of the original Storm was that the SurePress sensor was only in the center of the screen. To make Surepress actually work RIM had to have 4 sensors;  1 in each corner, and if pays off.

As for the on-screen keyboard you have 3 options: SurePress, full QWERTY, and multittap. The SurePress keyboard is the one set by default and is not practical to use. As much as I try to figure out how to use SurePress properly (and I have seen it used well) I can never get it right. As for the multitap: forget it. So as soon as you get to use one, first head into Options and switch the setting from “SurePress” to “Full Keyboard”. You’ll thank me for it.

The sound of human voice coming through the earpiece is less than perfect. For a BlackBerry, I expected RIM to offer a top notch earpiece, because this is a phone after all. Verizon Wireless does a great job in data and voice, no doubt about that, but the real problem here is in the hardware. While speaking even in a quiet spot I found that the caller’s voice was slightly tinny, and the caller also complained of not even hearing me (this is with five bars of 3G).  In fact I would usually just use the speaker to turn voice calls into shouting sessions.

The bundled headset uses a 3.5mm jack which provides decent sound quality, and can be used for videos, songs, and voice calls without having much of an issue.

And as for the $179.99 price with a 2-year contract on Verizon Wireless, per-usual their network coverage and voice quality is the best you can find besides Sprint. Although at the mall I completely lost all wireless connections, and a nearby iPhone 3GS was working perfectly. Sorry AT&T, but you still just don’t cut it in terms of coverage. Although here’s a note I’d like to leave here: in all of these photos, 3G isn’t working. Hmm.

Performance & BlackBerry OS 5.0

As any Blackberry owner might know a Blackberry takes ages to turn itself on . Afterwards it’s pretty much smooth sailing, except when the bugs of Blackberry OS 5.0 kick in. So far the phone has (once) completely locked up and required a reboot, which was done by removing the battery because the power button wouldn’t respond. Also for brief periods of time the unit would be lag behind in typing, menu selection, and downloading the smallest apps from the modest App World, which really doesn’t have any worthwhile apps. Some say the Android Market is filled with junk, but has a few treasures; Blackberry App World is mostly junk. Otherwise the looks of OS 5.0 isn’t that much to talk about either, so moving on I’ll talk about Wi-Fi.

802.11b/g Wi-Fi, GPS

They both work well and easy are to set up. Verizon Maps is not as good as Google Maps. The end of a very simple explanation.

Actually we’re not done in the Performance sector. It’s time to talk about the web browser….

Browser

Recently RIM has been working on the web browser bundled into OS 5.0. For good reason, because it needs lots of work to make it actually capable. Loading the full version of LaptopMemo (there’s a mobile version you know!) is torture. Images look like textures from the Nintendo 64, and even when the page has loaded, scrolling first comes out as a blank spot, and then it plays “catch up”. Keep working RIM, I suggest you use WebKit. Heard of it? I’m sure you have, and that’s why you demoed a WebKit-based web browser at MWC 2010. Now make an official release and then you’ll have a very happy audience, with me included.

Camera

If there is one killer feature of the Storm2 besides email, it’s the 3.2 megapixel camera with flash. The flash is extremely powerful and allows you to take modest pictures at night, and in the day produce some incredible shots.

Push Email, Accelerometer

Another quality feature in a Blackberry is fast email. On several tests, multiple Android phones would not get an email as fast as the Storm2 would from a Gmail server (a trait visible in all models).  Writing out emails is also very easy and in a clean layout. The superb email performance is one of the things that makes a Blackberry roll.

In this case the accelerometer is a 3-axis version, exactly like the iPhone, meaning that it can go into landscape mode on both right and left sides, as well as stay straight in portrait. Switching to different viewing modes usually takes about a second.

Battery

Since this is not a power-hungry smartphone and doesn’t have the Snapdragon CPU of the Nexus One or fantastic OS features of iPhone, the Storm2 doesn’t really have much to waste power on, so you can expect an entire day of web browsing, voice calling, tweeting, taking pictures, and emails before the Storm2 goes into sleep on the 1400 mAhr battery. One negative I do have for the Storm2 is the charging mode. In most phones when you plug in the charger on a low amount of juice available, the phone continues to work, but on the Storm2, the radio signals go out and the camera flash is turned off with the charger plugged in. It doesn’t make sense.

Final Verdict

Would I recommend the Storm2? Sure. If you prefer a Blackberry over every other smartphone on the market (and there are solid reasons why you should), then this should be your first pick. But if you’re into cutting edge technology (that you can show off if you’re that type of jerk), a fast OS, advanced web browsing experience, and superior phone sound quality than the 9550 just isn’t for you. Still, it’s up there among the ranks of the iPhone, Nexus One, and others.

Pros

• BlackBerry Internet Service’s push email is out of this world
• Well-rounded design
• The concept of SurePress
• An amazing 3.2 MP camera with great flash
• Long-lasting battery

Cons

• Unusually heavy
• Web browser
• Mediocre call quality and screen resolution
• App World needs real apps

[Thanks!, Emma at RIM]

BlackBerry Storm2 9550 @ testfreaks.com