Gnome Hunters.
I will have one.
I will have one.
Blackberry Storm2
Posted 11/03/09 at 1:28 PM by VerziehenOne
Multi Purpose blog post time.
Me and the girlfriend went and picked up Storm2's on Friday last week, since I decided my Razr was nearing the end of it's awesomeness, and she decided she wanted a smartphone, and one that didn't have a crack in the screen that looked like a very large hat.
We jumped through all of the hoops and walked out with 2 very new, very slick Storm2's.
Purpose #1: Brief Review of the Storm2
I'd give it a 3.5 word rating: Slick, Smooth, Patience-required
It is very slick. Integrated everything you can imagine ... many many e-mail address that you can monitor seperately or all at once, many IM clients (AIM / Yahoo / MSN/ ICQ / Google Talk / Blackberry IM / etc), SMS and MMS, and much more, all easily monitored. Integrated support for Facebook is quite nice, as you can sync the Facebook picture with their Contact Photo, (updating if you wish, everytime their Facebook photo does), as well as syncing the Contact list with your Friends on Facebook and updating / etc. MySpace is also available as an App, but it is less integrated. Flickr, Word/Excel/Powerpoint, Weatherbug (nifty), Pandora/Slacker Radio, and much more. Must mention RDM+ Remote Desktop for Mobile ... wow, SO cool! Search for it for more info... All run very smoothly and are quite nicely integrated.
Smooth! 5.0 is fantastic. Scrolling is fast and easy, making changes is intuitive and organized, and it is quite user-friendly when it comes to making changes / updating / all sorts of fun. Camera takes great photos very smoothly, with a very bright light and clear quality. You can even hide your dirty photos if you want... The Video recorder is also quite nice, (24 FPS I think), and looks great! The music output is very loud and clear, and it functions quite nicely without even a pair of headphones (which you can either get a Bluetooth pair and wirelessly listen, or use a standard 8MM jack).
Patience is required. The one thing that really makes this stand out from the iPhone, besides that it is a Blackberry, is the SureTouch technology. The entire touch screen is a button. In the Storm 1, it had one receptor and you could only input with one touch at a time. The Storm2 they redesigned it, and now it has 4 receptors which provide a much smoother, easier and more accurate clicking experience as well as allowing multi-clicks. You even get the added benefit of disabling the SureTouch when it is locked, which saves battery and is just nice all around. However, this must include the mention that Texting is quite different on this phone than any other QWERTY keyboard one, or the iPhone, due to the way the SureTouch performs.
At first it was different, even a little frustrating. Unlike a physical keyboard, there is no haptic feedback and you are not really 100% what you're pressing. However, as you become more familiar with where your fingers are actually touching, before you click, you will become way faster at typing. Since I got it, i've really grown into liking it a lot, and am texting much faster now than even before on my Razr, which is very nice.
Negatives: Auto-Correct / Suggestion. Good God is that an irritating feature. It likes to change your words to 'similar' ones, which some might find nice ... I find increrdibly irritating. One such example was my girlfriend trying to type 'Su', to spell 'Super', and it changed it to 'Diuretics'. Yep. Some of this can be turned off, but it appears it is not that easy to completely disable it, and it can be jarring.
Another negative is lack of customizability to the packaged Theme's look. Yes, you can reorganize the buttons, display what you want, and how many rows on the startup. Why isn't there color-change options? Why do you have to have your main screen taken up by icons (even in the 'today' view)? It seems antiquated that this isn't more customizable, but there are a lot of promising and neat Themes out there for the taking I spoze.
GPS ... I am not paying 10$ a month for the bad Verizon one. I cannot wait until Google finishes theirs...
Vibrating is SO loud too. Way loud. Not necessarily bad, just loud.
The Alarm is nice too, but I miss the Razr's functionality in that it had 3 Alarms that could be set, instead of only 1.
That all said, it seems so far to be a very slick phone with a lot of promise. Yeah, the iPhone is awesome, but AT&T is not as awesome. I love my iPod Touch though, so I can play with that.
Purpose #2: I'd love it if I could track an RSS of certain threads on this site, or even an RSS of the threads that I am tracking in my User CP already. Any of you have any ideas on how? If not that's fine, just thought i'd mention that i'd like to be able to do that.
Me and the girlfriend went and picked up Storm2's on Friday last week, since I decided my Razr was nearing the end of it's awesomeness, and she decided she wanted a smartphone, and one that didn't have a crack in the screen that looked like a very large hat.
We jumped through all of the hoops and walked out with 2 very new, very slick Storm2's.
Purpose #1: Brief Review of the Storm2
I'd give it a 3.5 word rating: Slick, Smooth, Patience-required
It is very slick. Integrated everything you can imagine ... many many e-mail address that you can monitor seperately or all at once, many IM clients (AIM / Yahoo / MSN/ ICQ / Google Talk / Blackberry IM / etc), SMS and MMS, and much more, all easily monitored. Integrated support for Facebook is quite nice, as you can sync the Facebook picture with their Contact Photo, (updating if you wish, everytime their Facebook photo does), as well as syncing the Contact list with your Friends on Facebook and updating / etc. MySpace is also available as an App, but it is less integrated. Flickr, Word/Excel/Powerpoint, Weatherbug (nifty), Pandora/Slacker Radio, and much more. Must mention RDM+ Remote Desktop for Mobile ... wow, SO cool! Search for it for more info... All run very smoothly and are quite nicely integrated.
Smooth! 5.0 is fantastic. Scrolling is fast and easy, making changes is intuitive and organized, and it is quite user-friendly when it comes to making changes / updating / all sorts of fun. Camera takes great photos very smoothly, with a very bright light and clear quality. You can even hide your dirty photos if you want... The Video recorder is also quite nice, (24 FPS I think), and looks great! The music output is very loud and clear, and it functions quite nicely without even a pair of headphones (which you can either get a Bluetooth pair and wirelessly listen, or use a standard 8MM jack).
Patience is required. The one thing that really makes this stand out from the iPhone, besides that it is a Blackberry, is the SureTouch technology. The entire touch screen is a button. In the Storm 1, it had one receptor and you could only input with one touch at a time. The Storm2 they redesigned it, and now it has 4 receptors which provide a much smoother, easier and more accurate clicking experience as well as allowing multi-clicks. You even get the added benefit of disabling the SureTouch when it is locked, which saves battery and is just nice all around. However, this must include the mention that Texting is quite different on this phone than any other QWERTY keyboard one, or the iPhone, due to the way the SureTouch performs.
At first it was different, even a little frustrating. Unlike a physical keyboard, there is no haptic feedback and you are not really 100% what you're pressing. However, as you become more familiar with where your fingers are actually touching, before you click, you will become way faster at typing. Since I got it, i've really grown into liking it a lot, and am texting much faster now than even before on my Razr, which is very nice.
Negatives: Auto-Correct / Suggestion. Good God is that an irritating feature. It likes to change your words to 'similar' ones, which some might find nice ... I find increrdibly irritating. One such example was my girlfriend trying to type 'Su', to spell 'Super', and it changed it to 'Diuretics'. Yep. Some of this can be turned off, but it appears it is not that easy to completely disable it, and it can be jarring.
Another negative is lack of customizability to the packaged Theme's look. Yes, you can reorganize the buttons, display what you want, and how many rows on the startup. Why isn't there color-change options? Why do you have to have your main screen taken up by icons (even in the 'today' view)? It seems antiquated that this isn't more customizable, but there are a lot of promising and neat Themes out there for the taking I spoze.
GPS ... I am not paying 10$ a month for the bad Verizon one. I cannot wait until Google finishes theirs...
Vibrating is SO loud too. Way loud. Not necessarily bad, just loud.
The Alarm is nice too, but I miss the Razr's functionality in that it had 3 Alarms that could be set, instead of only 1.
That all said, it seems so far to be a very slick phone with a lot of promise. Yeah, the iPhone is awesome, but AT&T is not as awesome. I love my iPod Touch though, so I can play with that.
Purpose #2: I'd love it if I could track an RSS of certain threads on this site, or even an RSS of the threads that I am tracking in my User CP already. Any of you have any ideas on how? If not that's fine, just thought i'd mention that i'd like to be able to do that.
Total Comments 6
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Check out Viigo. Great app for tracking RSS feeds. There is a fully functional version that supports weather, scores, etc. or you can download viigo news which just does RSS.
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I have the original Storm and Google maps shows my position. Is there something new about the GPS with the Storm2?
Also, you can turn off auto-correct. Options -> Language and Text Input Style -> Show Text Input Options -> Uncheck Auto Correction. (I should be using the same OS as the Storm2 as they also released it for Storm1's). |
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I love Viigo, it's way slick and very userfriendly. Is there a way to track specific threads though? I imagine not, but figure it's worth asking.
Google Maps will show your current position, but does not currently do the Turn By Turn thing yet, that apparently is in the works. I have no desire to pay for the Verizon one, but apparently that is also a very well done piece of software. Also, thank you Bass for that suggestion, but it still shows up with some auto-fill things. One major positive with that options menu is that it seems to get rid of auto-completion stuff. My girlfriend typed in 'yea' and got 'uranium'. :P |
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Depends on what forum you are talking about. You can enable RSS for threads in vBulletin, however, I don't think EJ has this function turned on.
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Ahh, okay. Yeah, there are a few threads here that I like to keep up on, and i'd like it if an RSS would tell me when they are updated. But, i'll have to keep dreaming.
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I have a Storm1 and I have to say I am completely satisfied with it. I had wanted to go with an iPhone, but AT&T's coverage in my area is nothing short of abysmal. Friends who live in NYC and have iPhones typically end up on either Verizon or Sprint's networks when they come back to this area to visit family, and then have to pay massive roaming fees unless they turn off or severely restrict data services.
Consequently, I grabbed a Storm after trying one out in the local Verizon store a few months ago, and I have to admit the damn thing is great. SureTouch definitely takes some getting used to, but I actually prefer it over the iPhone's touch screen now. All in all, I'm very satisfied with it. (Also, the 5.0 software update is really nice. I've noticed that pretty much everything the phone can do is much quicker. The only annoyance was the god damned text completion you complained about, which I have since turned off.) |
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Trackbacks
Recent Blog Entries by VerziehenOne
- Blackberry Storm2 (11/03/09)
- Short Sweet Rant #5 (10/09/09)
- Short Sweet Rant #4 (10/06/09)
- Short Sweet Rant #3 (08/18/09)
- Short Sweet Rant #2 (08/11/09)
