BlackBerry Storm: First Impressions

UPDATE Nov. 25, 2006: We bought our BlackBerry Storm on Friday Nov. 21 and examined it closer. Our video has more information about what our technicians have found so far during their lab tests. Click on the player at left to review our take on the BlackBerry Storm. —Ed.

After many delays and much speculation—most of it wrong—BlackBerry has joined the rest of the cell-phone world by introducing its first touch-screen model, the Storm, available Friday from Verizon for $200 with a two-year contract (minus a $50 rebate).

Besides a touch screen, the phone packs a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash; a full HTML Web browser that supports streaming; GPS navigation capability with audible, turn-by-turn directions; and you the ability to edit Office documents—something only two other BlackBerrys allow you to do: the Bold and Pearl Flip. It's also a multi-network phone, which makes it one of the very few Verizon phones that will work outside the U.S. Like the iPhone, the Storm presents voicemails as an e-mail-like list, enabling you listen to your messages in any order you choose with just a poke of your finger.

The smart-phone arrives in our labs tomorrow (Friday), so we should have information about the Storm's actual performance soon. (Like all the products Consumer Reports tests, we're buying our own Storm—just as you would—for testing.)

But we did have a chance to try it out at a recent press preview, and our first impressions are generally positive. The details:

Firm, yet responsive, touch screen. With cell-phone touch screens—including the iPhone's—it's too easy to inadvertently launch a program or hit the wrong key on their virtual keyboards. The Storm remedies this with a touch-screen that demands that you press down on it firmly, as you would a real button, before it executes a command. (The screen actually sits on top of a large button that clicks when you depress the screen surface.) While quirky to use at first, we found this unique technology very effective in minimizing time-wasting mistakes. A word of caution: The display won't work with a stylus or long fingernails.

Brilliant display. Photos and other elements appeared sharp and bright on the Storm's 3.25 (diag.) display. The spec sheet says the resolution is 480 X 360 pixels, which would make it among the highest we've seen on a phone. The Storm's built-in accelerometer automatically reorients Web pages, photos, and other display elements when you tilt the phone, which is convenient for switching between portrait and widescreen format.

Ergonomic keypad and keyboards. The Storm's virtual keypad is large, well-spaced, and easy to see. Ditto for the Storm's two virtual keybards: a full QWERTY and a condensed SureType version familiar to BlackBerry users. The keys glow blue whenever you touch to let you know you're hitting the correct one. The Storm (Click on image at right for a closer look.) presents the full QWERTY keyboard when you tilt the phone on its side to take advantage of the wide screen. Holding the phone vertically, which put the display in portrait mode, squeezes the keyboard into condensed mode.

Easy navigation. The Storm's menus look similar to older BlackBerry phones, though feature access is more direct since you can peck at application and features with a poke or swipe of your finger. Tap the screen twice to zoom in on a photo, Web page, and other items on-screen. Back out by pressing the escape key at the base of the phone's display. Storm has several other buttons on it to assist with navigation and to quick-launch the camera, media player, and telephony features at any time. We jumped easily from the phone to the camera to the e-mail application.

Decent battery life. Verizon claims a talk time of six hours on 3G networks and 15 days of standby time. That's pretty good for a CDMA phone. We'll see if those claims stand up to our tests.

An elephant's memory. The Storm comes with 1gigabyte (GB) of internal memory, plus an 8GB MicroSD card, with support for cards up to 16GB. Getting at the card, however, is a bit of a hassle since you have to remove the Storm's battery cover.

Quibbles: The Storm's media player worked well and had a multi-band equalizer for fine-tuning sound. But the phone doesn't support Verizon's VCast service, an excellent source for downloading a wide variety of music and video content. Also, the camera, which has autofocus and digital zoom, seemed to have a noticeably slow first-shot delay when we snapped a few at the preview press event. We'll just have to further explore these issues in our tests.

Bottom line: The new BlackBerry Storm is not the iPhone killer that some bloggers have been claiming. But with its simple interface and powerful business and entertainment features, it may be one more good reason for smart-phone seekers to choose Verizon's top-notch service over less-consistent carriers.

The Storm should arrive in our labs soon and we'll report on how the Storm actually fares in our performance tests. In the meantime, check out  our free cell phone buying advice which includes our guide to wireless service providers.

—Mike Gikas