BlackBerry Storm2 9550

The BlackBerry Storm2 9550 finally delivers on the original Storm 9530’s promise. It’s a powerful device with an innovative click screen that really works and it feels finished instead of like an engineering prototype. Having said that, the BlackBery Storm 9550 is now a proper version of last year’s groundbreaking smartphone. It’s a tough call, but i have to say no because of its unimpressive Web browsing and underpowered camera. The first BlackBerry Storm was at first held up as the savior for carriers without the iPhone, but over time it became clear RIM’s entry was short of this goal an aging OS, no Wi-Fi and a misconceived click-down touchscreen meant it often didn’t please either would-be iPhone buyers or BlackBerry veterans. The Storm2 addresses some of these features in a major way, but we’ll find out in our review whether it’s enough to change people’s minds.

New Features for the BlackBerry Storm2 9550 Smartphone :

• Next-gen SurePress Technology : The next generation SurePress technology on the BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone – combined with SureType® technology provides better typing accuracy and a more tactile feel. Type on a virtual, full QWERTY keyboard in portrait or landscape mode. Touch two areas of the screen at once to select multiple items.
• Wi-Fi Support : Link to wireless networks or hotspots with Wi-Fi connectivity. While away from your regular home or work coverage areas, you can still access streaming audio and video, BlackBerry data services and more.

Key Features of the BlackBerry Storm Smartphone :

• Long Lasting Battery : With a powerful battery and removable back plate for easy battery swapping, the BlackBerry Storm smartphone helps you do what you love, longer.
• Fast Network Connectivity : Built for speed and endurance, the BlackBerry Storm offers fast, reliable browsing and communication coverage.
• High Resolution Display : A high resolution 480×360 screen displays over 65,000 colors across a large wide screen creating an awe-inspiring display that enhances all your multimedia.
• Camera and Video Recording : Snap pictures like a pro with the built in 3.2 MP camera featuring auto focus and auto flash, or catch the sound and action, then share it with friends with the video camera function.
• Easy Call Taking : The familiar BlackBerry phone buttons are at the bottom of the BlackBerry Storm, ensuring an easy transition from browsing to call taking, without compromising current on-screen data.

The Plus Point

• Better push-down screen.
• 16GB card included; more RAM.
• Improved scrolling, typing, web browsing.
• Built-in Wi-Fi; GSM/HSPA world mode.
• Good call quality and battery life.

The Minus Point

• Push-down screen still damages the experience.
• No real hardware changes apart from Wi-Fi.
• Competitors have moved faster.
• BlackBerry OS 5.0 a minor update to an old OS.
• Camera photos are noisy versus rivals.
• App World has a small catalog, isn’t preloaded.

 

Design and Touch Screen

The Storm2 looks a little sleeker and more refined. Essentially, it consists of fewer moving parts. The Storm2 measures 4.4 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.6 ounces. It’s heavier than the HTC Imagio, our current Editors’ Choice, even though the Storm2 has a smaller screen and no mobile TV tuner or kickstand. Touch keys on the top edge handle power, ringer mute, and screen lock functions. Other shortcut and volume buttons are now rubberized. The Storm2 is still mostly black, although RIM darkened the chrome accents. The brushed aluminum back panel feels classy, and remains as before with the exception of the speakerphone (more on that in a moment).

The click screen the source of so much controversy surrounding the original Storm is entirely new. It’s a 3.3 inch, 360 by 480 pixel SurePress glass touch screen that supports 65K colors. The four front-panel function buttons are now touch-based and integrated with the rest of the glass. Colors appeared a little warmer and more natural, with less of a bluish cast.

The screen still presses down like the original Storm. But instead of a giant, hidden physical button, the Storm2 features four actuators, one under each corner. Touch the screen and the actuators exert electrical charge on the glass. It’s capable of registering two presses at the same time, such as when holding Shift while pressing a letter key. The final result : localized haptic feedback that feels natural. The screen doesn’t wiggle around in its perch anymore. Going back and forth between the two Storms, I could type more accurately and more quickly on the new screen starting from the very first sentence. You get real physical feedback. It’s still a little stiff, so prepare for cramped fingers after extended typing sessions.

The Storm2 also supports multi touch, but only in certain cases. You can copy and paste text by holding two fingers on both ends and double-tap a word and drag handles appear. It’s buggy, though, the drag handles jump around and sometimes leave graphic "ghosts" of themselves in spots. Double tapping also zooms, which isn’t as natural as the iPhone’s two-finger zoom or the Imagio’s touch zoom slider, but it works in a pinch. The scrolling is also inertial : you can swipe the screen, let go, and watch it roll to a stop. As before, turn the Storm2 on its side and the accelerometer calls up the landscape QWERTY keyboard; stand it up and you can choose portrait QWERTY or SureType arrangements.

 

BlackBerry OS 5.0

Usually, an x.0 release is an indication of a major reworking of a program that signals a fundamental shift in how it accomplishes its goals. In a few areas, that’s true for BlackBerry OS 5.0. Inertial (momentum based) scrolling is finally in place for touchscreen BlackBerries, and it’s now much easier to flick through a large list of unread e-mail or a long website. Typing is now improved, too, as there’s an auto-correction feature that works on all BlackBerries regardless of keyboard format, it doesn’t work as well as Apple’s or HTC’s but is appreciated.

The web browser has also been given a significant facelift. While it was "good enough" in previous releases, here it’s better at rendering sites that use AJAX code (which can include CSS, JavaScript or XML), such as web apps. Likewise, it benefits greatly from the touchscreen refinements. To some extent, it’s actually more of a pleasure to browse the web on a BlackBerry than it has before, as it’s more intuitive and produces more of the page views you’d expect.

Some of the features are welcome but relatively subtle. SMS (text messages) are now threaded, so it’s easier to follow a conversation that wasn’t conducted through e-mail. Folders now have notification markers to let you know if Facebook or another app has received new information. More of the interface elements are better-looking and make more sense in a touch environment.

All the same, what seems to define the OS is precisely how much hasn’t changed: in many ways, 5.0 feels more like a tarted up version of 4.7 (or even 4.5) than an actual overhaul. Even for those used to the Storm, many of the interface elements aren’t much different than they were a year ago. A few changes, like flagging messages for follow-up, are dependent on connecting to an upgraded BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Apart from better spacing for touch input, the contextual menus, buttons and options areas are still dominated by seas of text menus. There’s also no true multi-touch input, like pinching to zoom and again, the pressure-dependent screen hinders much of what you want to do.

Moreover, despite having more RAM and a fairly fast processor, some tasks just feel slow. Browsing is still in some ways an Achilles’ heel: while it may render more pages properly, sites still take an exceptionally long time to load. Wi-Fi actually doesn’t prove to be much of a help here. Other than providing a more reliable connection and saving on 3G data fees, the short-range wireless doesn’t radically accelerate load times. An iPhone, especially an iPhone 3GS, will run rings around a Storm2 both in accuracy and in speed.

Finally, there’s the concern that some one-time BlackBerry advantages have been negated. It’s nice to have a free GPS navigation app, BlackBerry Maps, but it now has to compete against Google Maps Navigation on Android phones, where the true turn-by-turn, spoken-out directions and (on Android 2.0 devices) voice-guided searches can often replace a dedicated GPS unit altogether, position lock also isn’t as quick as on competitors. A Storm2 will make for a decent media player, but it now not only has to compete against the clearly more feature-rich iPhone but still quite capable Android phones as well. It’s time RIM took its non-business apps more seriously.

 

A Note On BlackBerry App World

If you’ve read our recent BlackBerry reviews, you’ll know that App World has been a mixed bag. For better or worse, that’s still true here. The interface is still reasonably easy to use, and the catalog has its share of useful and simply interesting apps. Even so, it still feels like a "me too" product that doesn’t expose you to relevant apps as well as the iPhone’s App Store does.

It certainly doesn’t have the breadth. At the end of 2009, App World had just a few thousand titles where the iPhone had over 120,000 and even Android Market had well over 10,000. We’d be the first to acknowledge that quantity doesn’t make up for quality, but many of the apps for BlackBerry handsets already have ports or equivalents on other platforms that perform roughly as well, or in some cases better. Unless your business needs dictate a specific BlackBerry app or a BlackBerry is your only alternative to the iPhone’s current app limitations, third-party software can sometimes be a weak point.

We had further point out that App World isn’t even preloaded on many blackBerries. Whether it’s RIM’s policies or (more likely) carriers trying to squeeze out competitors to their own stores, just getting the store on the Storm2 and other BlackBerries still requires a web search for the store, downloading an app and installing it. This is quite probably the reason why the BlackBerry hasn’t taken off as an app-friendly environment, and if the policy isn’t reversed it might tarnish the whole platform.

 

Camera Functions

Photography and video recording on the Storm2 have remained virtually unchanged from the Storm2. Where the Bold 9700 jumped to a larger-resolution sensor, the touchscreen phone still has the 3.2-megapixel sensor, autofocus and flash it did a year earlier. It may be flexible for closeups and low-light shots, but the results we garnered weren’t what we would consider quality. Compared to the recently tested HTC Hero and Droid Eris both of which cost about half as much on contract the Storm2’s shots were clearly noisier. That the Android phones also produce a higher resolution 5-megapixel image (partly responsible for the reduced visible noise) hints RIM has some catching up to do.

A pleasant surprise came from the video, however. Versus the Hero and Droid Eris, the Storm2 produced smoother output and was much better at adapting to movement or changes in light levels. It’s still relatively low-resolution and prone to drab, muddy output compared to the clear and vivid iPhone 3GS, but we’d prefer the BlackBerry over the Hero if on the fly movie making were the deciding factor. We just wish RIM had implemented a means of uploading directly to YouTube from the video app rather than turning to third-party tools or e-mail.

Below the sample of test result video.. Keep watch

Call Quality and Battery Life

As a series, the BlackBerry line has usually produced good call quality on both ends. That holds up with the Storm2, as calls were loud and clear. Being on a CDMA network is still a limitation, though. By its nature, CDMA tends to produce a slightly "digital" sound to the voice that was noticeable for anyone we talked to. Ironically, it will be when the phone is roaming on GSM or (in Europe) HSPA networks that it should sound the best, if just for the change in protocol. Reception hasn’t been an issue in our testing. Longevity isn’t significantly affected by the presence of a touchscreen. We’d still highly recommend that the phone be charged once a day as moderate use will drain it of most or nearly all its charge in a single day, but a full phone can be left overnight with about 80 to 85 percent of its charge remaining and still have about half its charge a day later.

 

The Conclution

I want to clarify that the BlackBerry Storm2 9550 is a beautiful smartphone. Many aspects are done well, and some of the previous show stoppers (lack of Wi-Fi, the screen mechanism, unnatural scrolling) have been cleared away. For the business of actually taking calls and viewing e-mail, it’s up to the task.

 

For further details about this product please watch these videos below :

 

 

Complete Reference of BlackBerry Storm2 Smartphone and BlackBerry Storm Smartphone : 

1. BlackBerry Storm2 Smartphone

• BlackBerry® Storm2™ 9550 smartphone

2. BlackBerry Storm Smartphone

• BlackBerry® Storm™ 9530 smartphone
  • for TELUS
  • for Verizon
• Learn more about SureType® on the
  BlackBerry Storm

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