Early feedback on Blackberry Storm
A mobile-savvy friend who loves his Blackberry writes: “After 15 minutes of experimentation at the Verizon store, I would say that the Storm is good hardware, but like most Blackberrys was released with feature-complete but slow software. For some reason these guys wait to tune performance until after release. (Or at least that is the experience I have had with the 8830, which now has much better performance and battery life than first release)
I do not think the Storm is an iPhone killer. It is a worthy competitor, and will be much more worthy after a software performance tune.
There are ultimately three major differences between the Storm and iPhone: network–Verizon vs. AT&T, email vs. iTunes, and the app store.
I like the Verizon network much better here in Santa Barbara, and have found it
better traveling (at least places where I was traveling 3 years ago with my AT&T
GSM phone in the US). [Someone] agrees — his 3G iPhone has dropped a ton of
calls.
Blackberry has killer email, and I can suffer through also carrying an
iPod. I always seem to have battery issues with phones anyways, so not a
lot of juice left for music.
Therefore, the thing that in my mind puts iPhone ahead is the app store.
While RIM is getting better (I actually have 4 adder aps on my current
BBerry, including the best WSJ reader I have ever worked with), Apple is
far ahead with apps.
That said, I can not wait to try my Storm….