BlackBerry Storm 9530
Phone Scoop Review
Nov 20, 2008 by Eric M. Zeman
RIM's first touch-screen BlackBerry finally hits the market. Find out if RIM's Storm lives up to the hype. read review ›
User Reviews
Average Ratings
You all have [...]
Seriously are you all programmed robots hired from blackberry or something? This phone completely sucks. I got it the second day it came out and i was soooo disappointed. Then verizon had to send me an updated "better" version of the phone so i sent that piece of crap in and they sent me a bigger piece of crap storm. BUT lets stick to the forum standard
Pros: Its heavy enough to defend myself with
Cons: WHERE SHALL I START HMM
-sound quality/speakers are horrid
-picture quality for youtube videos are distorted
-phones battery lasts maybe half a day if i'm lucky
-phone lags when im trying to dial someone's [...] number. A feature that has nothing to do with the internet
-phone lags when i try to text
-phone lags when i switch from regular to landscape mode.'
-phone freezes ALL THE TIME then i have to reboot and that takes 10 minutes+
-for some reaason when i text the e and the d button don't type right at all and it ends up highlighting my whole section that i typed and then i keep texting so it clears everything i had so i basically have to start over again.
-it lags when i try to answer a call.
-too [...] big
- the only good covers they have for it are the silicone ones that make it impossible to get it out of your pocket cuz it sticks to the material.
-absolutley NO good applications for it. (WHO THE [...] USES FLICKR ANY WAY?"
-A wopppping 2 games on it WOW!!! IM AMAZED
-they have a vznavigator preinstalled as a feature on the phone but they dont tell you it costs an additional 9.99 a month to use
-The phone can act like a modem but to use that feature cost $12 i think a month :??????!??!!
-when you open an application and you use the back button to get out it doesnt close the application. You have to physically press the blackberry button and scroll down to "close" to exit the program so it doesnt run and further lag your device then it alrdy does.
Ed. note: removed foul language
phone is a serious joke
This phone is a joke.... I cant believe verizon would sink this low just to try and compete with the iphone. I have had this phone for 3 days and I am waiting a replacement phone already. The keyboard stopped working and has a crack in the screen underneath. If vzw decides that its my error I have to pay full retail price for it...I hate this phone.... The camera is a joke. Who had 7 minutes to capture a fun image....They need to recall them. I love when they sell it to you its great and your great but when the problems arise they treat you like a criminal!
So very disappointed :(
I waited and waited for this phone since the rumors first started circulating. I passed up on the Dare and other phones because I did not want to waste my upgrade credits.
I waited in line with three friends (we have no lives) on the first day to see these phones in person. Three of the four of us ended up buying them.
Now just five days later I am the only one out of the three of us that has not returned the phone. My friend Mark returned it the first day. he said the touch screen was just unusable for texting and typing e-mails. I find it difficult but not unusable, but I am nowhere near as fast a texter as him. My other friend gave up on the phone after a few days saying it was a "bug infested piece of crap that crashed every time you touched it."
I have been holding on and hoping for a quick software update to solve the phones issues but I am now hearing that rumors of this coming soon are just that. Rumors and nothing more. I will be returning the phone on friday. Maybe an Omnia is in my future.
One of my friends that returned his bought an iPhone and we did some side by side comparison today and the Storm just sucks in comparison of video playback, transition speeds, ease of use, and almost everything else.
The phone has promise but did not achieve any of it's potential. I will not bother with pros and cons since I cannot think of any pros for a phone that function this badly, has such an poorly thought out screen design, and performs so poorly with multimedia files.
I am giving it one and a half stars solely because it gets good phone reception and call clarity was good.
Bewildered and Betrayed
Wow. As someone who has been awaiting the arrival of this phone as much as the next phone nerd, I truly am disappointed. This phone constantly freezes and the OS is quite slow. The touchscreen is not even very responsive. I made some adjustments to the touch settings but they were to no avail. On the bright side, the screen resolution, camera quality, and media players are great. The OS is fairly easy to use. It is certainly more intuitive than past BlackBerry models. The signal strength and call quality are also wonderful. It is just such a disappointment about the speed of the device though. It is like waiting for the second coming of Christ to go from one menu to another.
THE BRIGHT SIDE...is that like all devices that ever get released, NEW SOFTWARE is already on the way out. This should improve process speed and touch function. With these two things remedied, it truly will be an "iphone killer" Clearly, the email and media capabilities of the Storm annihialate the iphone, and the Storm is on a better network too. Also, this guy CAN sync with itunes and MAC, so thats no longer an excuse either. At the end of the day, I would suggest you go ahead and get (order) one. At $200 the price will only go up. Once new software comes out, this bad boy really will be everything people were expecting it to be.
Good and Bad.
Pros:
Good Screen
Respectable Battery Life
Best Web Browsing on a Blackberry
Cons:
Typing is Terrible
No Poximity Sensor = Cheek periodically turns the phone on mute when on a call
OS is Buggy (regardless of OS Version)
Processor is way too slow
App Memory is terrible
Having had the Curve, Bold, and Tour, I was super excited for the Storm. Finally a cool Blackberry on the best network.
What I found was something of a mixed bag. The design of the phone is cool; it looks attractive and seems to be built well. The screen is gorgeous. However, RIM decided to utilize this new Surepress technology. To me, it is a huge obstacle in enjoying this phone. Typing is difficult and frustrating. I find myself spending 30% of the time fixing errors as opposed to simply typing. For a company that prides itself on the keyboard functionality, this was a huge oversight.
The phone also lacks Wi-Fi. While not a huge problem, it does keep the phone from reaching its full potential.
The web browsing is good, in fact excellent for a Blackberry, but average in comparison to Safari or Opera.
The lack of memory also prohibits the user from installing multiple applications. Why RIM decided to only install 128MB of RAM is beyond me. With many phones now having 256MB or more in RAM, this is a big bummer in light of App World.
Overall, i was a little dissappointed in the phone. I am still trying to get used to using the phone. I won't lie, the daily reset of the phone is getting annoying. I do appreciate the effort of RIM and want to like the phone more than the iPhone. But the reality is that the Storm 2 may solve a lot of the problems experienced by users of the original Storm including me. My advice to anyone looking at this device; wait for the Storm 2.
BB Storm good, not great
I have had this phone for a about a week now and like it. I dont love it as i did with my iphone. I will say that in maine where i live the service on verizon is 100 times better than with my att.Which is the only reason i switched from my iphone in the first place.
The things they did right on this phone are the screen, which is i feel even better than my iphone screen in size and clarity(especialy in sunlight) I think they nailed the messaging app as all blacknerrys do. the camera while it does take FOREVER to take a picture does take wonderful pics. And last but not least the sure touch screen. I love it i think its an awesome inovation. no more accidently selecting something while scrolling.
Now for the things they didnt do so well. the OS which i never have had an issue with on other blackberrys freezes nonstop and is soo slow that i sometimes think im aging watching it. the conversion from portrait to landscape takes forever as well.The first one i got had some defect where the bottom part of the screen wouldnt click to select anything so i had to push down hard as hell to get it to work so i brought it back and they replaced it. the second phone hasnt done this but it still freezes and is slow.
the lock key t the top should have been a soft button or a real button but to make it part of the phone makes it hard to press with very little travel and hard to find at night.the voicecommand button should have been somewhere else. i hit it like 5 times a day.
All in all this is a good phone that i enjoy and think it has all the things i need to use it and enjoy it, i am a little miffed that the storm 2 is coming out so soon but maybe there will be some sort of program for people that just purchased the first one, similar to what apple did after the price drop.
slow is not always the best
The blackberry storm is the first of its kind. The thing i missed most is a track ball. The phone is great if you are patient. The touch screen is pretty cool but you have to push firmly on it.
The Blackberry Storm
over all its a good phone i have had the blackberry curve and i love it but the storm is a good upgrade! i love my curve and i listen to you guys on this site and i keep going back and forth to my curve to my storm. now i have made a decision and i am keeping the storm!
Great, but...
Great phone. Nice look. Good screen. Easy to use. Great camera. Good dialer, but..... when it came to texting, for me, it was abysmal.
I have large flat thumbs. I tried all sorts of angles, but most of my texts were a mass of garble. I would spend tons of time trying to get in a couple of sentences with my head shaking back and forth as I continually tried to hit the right keys.
I deactivated, reactivated, deactivated, reactivated and now at the end of the 30 days I have found that no matter what angle I tried to get my thumbs into, I could not make it work. Back to the i760 with hopes that Verizon will come out with something in the near future to fit the phat thumb challenged people.
So my recomendation on the 9530 is tthat ig u whant to tupe lijw thos, by 1. Otherwise, either wait for improvements, have plastic surgery for the deformed thumbs or be happy with one you brought to the dance.
Tom
Great Phone...
If you purchased the first waive of STORM's then you need to go and download the new software, which ends in .75. I currently work in the industry and Blackberry is coming out with more up dates for this phone. The new software helps out bluetooth, sound, and the screen. The review about changing the screen options is good advice and helps out if you don't like the out of box settings.
Pros: It is a blackberry
Great Screen -better resolution than the Iphone
larger 3G network (rev a)
Visual Voicemail
Sound Quality
8GB card included
Rhapsody music (over 5 million songs for $ 15/month)
App store coming in March of 2009
Cons:
none so far after updating the software.
