Review: BlackBerry Storm
The Storm's music player is nearly identical to that found on the Bold and the Pearl Flip, save for the integration of touch. Tap the Media icon in the main menu to open the gateway to all the Storm's media.
The basic music menu is unchanged from other 'Berries. It lets you select from the songs, artists, genres, albums, playlists, etc. For the first time in recent memory, there is actually an equalizer available for users to alter the sound, You have to hit the BlackBerry key to find it, under the options selection. It offers 12 equalizer pre-sets to adjust the sound a little bit better to your tastes. You can also turn an audio boost function on and off. This raises the maximum volume of playback.
The player is no more impressive than the Curve's. You can play or pause/stop the music with the touch screen, as well as skip forward and backward tracks. As with most media players, a progress bar shows you how much of the song remains, and album art is displayed if it is tagged to the song. Again, the BlackBerry key pulls up a big menu of options that can be altered during playback, such as sending the music to a Bluetooth headset, setting the current song as a ringtone, and others.
Music played back through the speaker sounds okay, but not great. You can make it insanely loud if you want, but the quality of the sound suffers a bit if you do. Music sounds pretty good through either regular headphones or stereo Bluetooth headphones. The EQ and audio boost function both go a long way to making the Storm one of the best-sounding 'Berries I've reviewed.
Music can be sideloaded directly onto a microSD card. It can also be drag-and-dropped through mass storage mode. Lastly, it can be synced with the Roxio music software (which comes with the device), or an as-yet-unreleased piece of software that will allow direct syncing with iTunes.