BlackBerry Storm 9500

The Storm is here and while I’m sure you’re anxious to know how it fared. We were too. So it took us a little while to get through with testing and here’s what we have to say.

Form Factor
The 9500’s build quality exudes a certain sturdiness with slim chromed lines and who can miss that brilliant 3.5-inch SurePress touchscreen display that is anything but conventional and clearly visible even in broad daylight. It sports a resolution of 360 x 480 (184ppi) pixels and 65k colors with an accelerometer for screen rotation. Though it’s 3G ready, video calling might be a bit of a problem considering there’s no secondary camera. The 3.2 megapixel AF camera comes with a single LED for a flash and is located at the back.

On one side of this slim device (that we thought to be a lot thicker from the previews) is a 3.5mm standard earphones socket, volume keys and a dedicated camera key. A customizable key that’s usually set to Voice Command is located on the other side with a micro USB port. Even though there seemed to be plenty of place for a hot swap slot, the Storm, like all other BlackBerry devices has its microSD card slot located under the rear panel (1GB card included with support for up to 16GB). It seems that RIM just refuses to do it any other way. Below the display are the traditional BlackBerry menu and Escape keys in between the call take (also used to access the dial pad) and the call end keys.

It’s a bit on the heavy side though (155g) and if you shake it, you actually hear the display move. There’s also a slight visible gap all around the screen. I’m not entirely sure how we feel about that. Nevertheless it’s still a good looking piece of hardware.

Features and Performance_Interface_

Running on a BlackBerry OS with a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, the Storm is decently quick, but like most other touchscreen handsets, it does have a few kinks that need to be worked out. There’s sometimes a bit of lag when it comes to typing in certain fields. The display uses what we’d like to call ‘Tap-Screen’ technology that basically implies you’ll have to actually press keys on the screen just like you would a normal physical keypad with buttons. You can still swipe your finger over the screen for navigation though and this is one of the better features of the handset.

It has no support for handwriting recognition as it has no stylus for the same but there are three types of keypads – Sure-type, alphanumeric and QWERTY that will by default show up when the handset is held in landscape. The accelerometer is not erratic but it is a bit too sensitive and there’s no control for that. It took us a little while to get used to the tap-screen display when using the keypads and like other similar touchscreen handsets you WILL end up hitting the wrong keys quite often till the action is mastered. The screen orientation will shift to landscape if turned to the left or the right.

We like the kind of technology the display on the Storm employs, though we do feel it could have been perfected by maybe having a larger screen. The 3.25-inch screen will do for now.
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Business Features
Email
Blackberry has always been one of the better handsets when it came to email functionality with a strong appeal to the business user. But the rules of the game are different on this phone as the ‘physical’ QWERTY and or Sure-Type keypads are missing. But the mails still keep flowing seamlessly and right from the start email configuration of both our corporate account and personal accounts happened instantly. All those who swear by the Blackberry probably know by now that all RIMs phones work perfectly fine with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and of course, BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server).

There are really no further upgrades as compared to the BlackBerry Bold’s email functionality. However, here is our humble request to RIM - now that you have given us the HTML support for emails we hope to have some Flash support too. It’s high time we move to the next step, isn’t it?

As a bit of information for noob users, when you ‘Wipe’ (clear personal data) the handset, it does absolutely nothing to your email accounts set up. You’ll have to contact your service provider and ask them to reset the PIN that you would have used to activate your account. You’ll also need that same PIN in order to create more accounts as every time you need to create an email account you need to sign in with a username and password. Even though there’s an option to create a new account, once it’s locked in with a PIN that’s first entered, you can’t do much till it’s reset. ‘It’s a security measure’ is what we were told.

Document Viewing
DataViz the company that used to provide licenses for Palm smartphones seems to have hit a jackpot with RIM coming as a saving grace and resurrecting the dying smartphone application vendor with their application - Documents to Go. They have indeed done a superb job by putting the pieces of software together to support Word, Excel and Power Point. The absence of a PDF reader, however, is still painfully evident but like with the other handsets, those files can be opened and viewed when sent as an attachment.

Documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats, when sent as an email attachment, can be edited on the same mail and sent to the relevant address without having to save them on the handset first. This of course saves a lot of time for the users who don’t want to clutter their phone with unnecessary data and are a little paranoid about the memory on the phone.

Connectivity Options and Browsing
The Blackberry Storm is a 3G device not unlike most of the other new handsets out there in the same class. Now that MTNL has already started their 3G services and other networks should be good to go by mid-2009 (we’re hoping), we really foresee a surge in sale of 3G phones. As for the service itself… well, that depends on its price of course. BIS (Blackberry Internet Service) by Vodafone via EDGE and GPRS, on which we tested the review device, was fast and somehow seemed to be quite a superior upgrade to other BlackBerrys in terms of data connection and download speeds.

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The BlackBerry Browser’s rendering of pages was also faster on this device, as compared to some of the others. But we have to agree that it was a little weird omitting Wi-Fi as a feature and still keeping the handset in the higher-end price range. After all, network coverage isn’t available everywhere and besides now-a-days Wi-Fi is becoming quite common. Agreed BIS is fast, but Wi-Fi would have been an added asset.

There is no Flash support for the Browser either and this is really quite disappointing. The tap-to zoom function is handy though. When you open a page the first thing you’ll see is a neat layout of the same, but here’s the problem, when you zoom in to any section that has thumbnail images, they look absolutely horrible. They’re extremely pixilated and blurry even if you change the settings to show images in high quality. The page will take a few seconds more to open with ‘high’ settings on but the images don’t seem to look too much better. Larger images don’t have this issue. On the plus side, text looks very well defined and crystal clear. Opening multiple pages simultaneously is not an option.

Aside from USB 2.0 connectivity, the Storm is also fully Bluetooth 2.0 ready with an A2DP profile for use with Stereo Bluetooth headsets and of course all regular functions like file transfer etc. Part of the Storm’s arsenal is a built-in GPS antenna with A-GPS support. BlackBerry Maps are supposed to be the native application, but they are not yet ready for India and it could be a while before they get here. We had a bit of a problem using the Google Maps application – it refused to open even after uninstalling and reinstalling.

Social Networking
A handy Facebook application is available and although it’s well designed it seems lacking in certain basic functions like checking out what other people have sent you or notifications you received. What it allows you to do is update your profile in all ways possible – send messages, invite friends, poke people, write on walls, and even directly and very simply upload images taken with the handset’s camera. The latter feature was of course the best. But we didn’t get any of our Notifications of Friend Requests or any others. It didn’t even seem to indicate messages recently written on my Wall.

Applications like Windows Live, G-Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and even an app for Flicker are preloaded for installation onto the device. Install and you’re ready for an active Social Networking lifestyle.

Media
The Storm’s audio player is simply brilliant. The quality of sound output from the device is loud enough to drown out noisy commuters and traffic and clear enough to let you enjoy your music with the volume level at full throttle. We didn’t think that the bundled handsfree earphones were the best choice for listening to music as they began to jar a bit at peak volume. But we did test the player with a set of better quality standard earphones and found that the player is just great. Plenty of EQ presets are available as well as the option to create playlists.

Video playback on the large screen with the kind of resolution it employs was great. There was virtually no lag. If you can, get a hold of a decent video converter.

The biggest problem we faced was trying to forward and rewind files as there seemed to be no way to bring up the scan bar. No matter how much we slid our finger over the screen or pressed it, nothing happened. It would come up at its own pace or not at all.

JPEGS look really good on the display, including the ones taken by the handset’s camera. However it does take a few seconds to open files that are a little large even if they’re taken by the handset’s own 3.2MP camera. Flick control can be used to move from one image to the next.
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Camera
The Storm’s 3.2 megapixel camera is quite good. There are limited settings though. Aside from image stabilizing, there’s White balance, Geo-tagging and color type. What we found extremely baffling is that the bottom part of the screen is taken up by a settings bar. It’s quite annoying that it unnecessarily takes up space on the screen and blocks the bottom portion of the frame. You can zoom in or out onto an object in the fame by simply sliding your finger up or down.

Images taken in normal daylight settings look pretty good with a fair amount of detail retained.

Colors do seem to get a bit dulled but not completely washed out.

The handset’s autofocus lens also allows for macro without a dedicated setting that needs to be activated. You can get quite up close and personal to objects and the picture reproduction looks quite good.

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Battery
We were expecting a fairly decent talk time from the 9500 and it delivered. With a full two day usage of the handset that included surfing the net, messaging, a little music and calls, we were quite happy. Talk time on an average clocked in at about 4 hours and 10 minutes (give or take a few minutes), which is not too bad.

The Bottom Line
Finally after the testing we can say - this is NOT the ‘Storm’ that killed the iPhone. RIM might have to try harder next time round to make a phenomenon like the iPhone bite the dust. Business will continue as usual, with or without the Storm. It’s great with multimedia and email but the lack of Wi-Fi, Maps and the few odd glitches we encountered were an issue for us. You can get used to the keypads and Tap-Screen in a little while. It’s otherwise on the whole quite a well equipped, well rounded device for social networking, media and business, but still has a few wrinkles that need ironing out.

To be brutally honest; we just couldn’t find anything special about this device, to make it seem more productive for an existing BlackBerry user. It’s simply a BlackBerry with a large touchscreen and better media capabilities and nothing more. Though we feel having a complete touch-screen smartphone, just does not serve the purpose of owning a BlackBerry, all things considered. Call us old school, but we still fancy the old BlackBerrys with nicely sliced keypads and trackball navigation.

We were a little impressed, we’ll admit that, but with a price tag of a whopping Rs. 27, 990, it’s something to very seriously sit back and consider. Just for your information, if you’re not a Vodafone customer and you feel you’ve saved enough money and are ready to take on a BlackBerry, no worries, RIM has decided to go ‘Public’ and unlock their devices for the general mobile user.

The Storm has passed but the ‘BlackBerry’ is definitely here to stay. Let’s see what else is on the way.

Specs

| **BlackBerry Storm 9500
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