A Storm waiting to happen (Blackberry Storm)

Member Name: Lehen

Product:	Blackberry Storm
Date:	14/06/09 (32 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The click-screen button is great for fast emailing and texting. Good quality screen & display

Disadvantages: Poor battery life, unreliable 3G network, multiple click-screen problems, slow reaction camera

Due to setting up a small freelance business on the side, I was on the look out for a solid and reliable phone for business needs. After doing a lot of reading and researching I was lead to believe that Blackberry was an industry standard brand to rely on. I had yet to try a Blackberry phone and heard a lot of good things about the Storm from your standard website reviewer, so I decided to dive into the market and head straight into the storm!

After a long contract was signed, I got home to find myself like a kid at Christmas. I couldn't wait to get stuck into my new phone, which on paper, was going to solve all my business needs and keep me ahead of the competition. Within days of getting the Storm I encountered nothing but problems with the phone. The main issues I had with the Storm were its very poor battery life. I found that I had the phone on charge more than I could actually use it! Some occasions I had to fully charge it overnight and by late afternoon the next day the phone battery would be dead! I tinkered with the phone changing its display settings and it allowed the phone to survive an extra day, most of which was spent on standby. The more I used the phone the more problems I found. The click screen would lock up the operating system on a regular basis, which would lead me to attempt to cold boot the phone, 9/10 times the battery would need to be ripped out and replaced in order to reset the phone. In addition to the poor battery life and unreliable clickscreen, the phone lock would unlock itself a number of times a week which would cause random dialling errors to happen. If all this was not enough to handle, I found the camera to have very slow reaction times in comparison to other phones and taking a photograph could take up to and in some cases over 10 seconds to lock onto a target and capture the photo.

Due to the large number of errors I encountered with the Storm, I sent the phone back to the manufacturer, which resorted to another Blackberry Storm being issued to me. Needless to say, I had the exact same problems with my exchanged model! With regards to me buying the phone for business use, I have yet to really use it for any kind of business work and it has been a major letdown for what I expected it to do.

In addition; the internet provider is very slow during the day and 5/10 there are a number of connection issues that disconnect me from the network - again, not a great feature if you want to use the Storm for business use! In 3G areas I often get very slow connections and only seems to be at a reasonable standard after 5pm.

I will be sending yet another model back to the manufacturer in hope that the third version I get shows some improvements in the above and lives up to the specifications stated in its press release.

The pros in buying a Blackberry Storm, from my personal experience are that it has a decent touch-click button keyboard which is great for quick emailing and texting and the display is very sharp with good quality video playback. The software that comes with the phone is plug-and-play, but some users may have problems.

If you are looking for a reliable phone for business use, I recommend researching into another Blackberry device before considering purchasing a Blackberry Storm.

Summary: Greatly fails to live up to expectations. Take great caution if you plan to purchase!

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