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3/10 new storm

Lreardon - 11/21/08

I would love to upgrade to this and so would my daughter but we were told yesterday that our upgrade is not due until Nov. 2009. However, I am a 10+ year customer with 3 phones. I did not ever receive notices of free early upgrades as some of my colleagues who are not due for an upgrade until March of 2010. I cant wait till nov. 09 to cancel tbis contract. Verizon is very unfair.

2/10 I waited 4 months for THIS???

mackenstein - 11/21/08  (Edited: 11/21/08)

After waiting months to upgrade my Windows-based PocketPC cell phone, I set my alarm clock early so that I could arrive at my local Verizon Wireless retailer when the doors opened this morning to check out the new Blackberry Storm. What a dissapointment. The touch screen keyboard is kindof nice, but you have to rotate the phone 90 degrees on its side to get the full querty keys. This takes over half of the screen's real estate so you are left with little viewing room. The device attempts to automatically switch the view from portrait to landscape when you rotate the phone--but it is quite problematic. First, I became annoyed that time after time it would take anywhere from 2 to 4 seconds for the phone to recognize it had been rotated. I could not find a key anywhere to force it to change modes. Worse yet, as I started typing on the phone, my typing action must cause the phone to pitch down slightly. Even though I was still holding it sideways to get the full keyboard, it would randomly re-orient itself back to portrait mode. Another productivity killer--I decide to test composing an email. The necessary "@" symbol for web addresses is not a choice on the keyboard when you are holding the phone sideways for landscape mode. You have to rotate the phone back to portrait mode, hit the symbol function key, then choose the "@" symbol, and then re-rotate the phone back 90 degrees (assuming you like the full querty keyboard). Otherwise, if you enjoy hitting each key twice to choose some letters, you can leave the phone in portrait mode if you wish. Now, for web browsing. Holding my Verizon Wireless Pocket PC phone (VX6800) in one hand, and the Blackberry Storm in the other, I decided to test a few web sites that I frequently visit such as espn.com and cnbc.com. There is absolutely no comparison. CNBC loaded in about 3 seconds on my PocketPC phone. I waited 2 minutes for the same web site to load on the Storm. Finally the storm just gave up and displayed a lovely stopwatch picture on the screen and locked up. I called over the sales rep--he tried to say that it was because the phone had so many people using it during the test launch it needed to be rebooted. Fine. So he gave me another test phone to try. Same exact results. I suppose there are people who will love this phone, and will defend its quirkiness and unusable "productivity" features---for me, I am hoping Verizon will decide to lower their prices on some of their newer PocketPC phones.

4/10 Thought it was better than it is!

jerang@... - 11/23/08

With all the buzz going around about the new RIM storm, I was excited to see the iPhone get some good competition. The storm has a great multimedia player; it's screen clarity and resolution is phenomenal and so its keyboard feedback. Other than that, I thought it was pretty disappointing, no WiFi support, no multitouch (Which isn't a big one but expected it) and it's browser is sub sub-standard. Overall it's a 4/10. Let's wait and see if the iPhone will get some competition.

8/10 I like it.

soprofessional - 12/14/08  (Edited: 12/14/08)

I like the Storm so far. A lot. It works very well in every respect. Typing is more challenging, I agree. May never be as fast as I was. However, it has a ton of multi-media features, the 3G is very fast, internet browsing is excellent and, mostly, the screen is spectacular. It is a far cry from the Treo I traded in, and also my Blackberry "brick with a thumbwheel" from 2-3 years ago. (note: my company uses Verizon, so iPhone isn't an option)

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