Blackberry Storm 9500 User Review (Blackberry Storm)

Member Name: sentientphil

Product:	Blackberry Storm
Date:	21/07/09 (8 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does almost everything! Looks, feel, everything!

Disadvantages: Camera!

I have owned this Blackberry Storm 9500 for approximately 4 months, and I thought an in depth detailed review from the view of an average person was in order!
I will mention all the useful bits, and avoid the jargon and pointless facts!
Where do I begin! it is a great phone, and agreed it won't fit everyone's tastes, it does have something for everyone!
when I first unpacked the phone, I did throw the instructions to one side.... not recommended but lots more fun! took off the protective plastic (and there was quite a few bits!) and then figured out which plug went to which cable and finally got it charging..... after sat there waiting for it to switch on, I made a drink, and it was still switching on when I got back..... but eventually it sprang to life and I was confronted by a wealth of sharp images and colour! the brightness and contrast is excellent! its mammoth TFT LCD display is not something to be underestimated! it really can be as good as the pictures show! after wondering watching the buttons light up under my finger, I notice that you push the screen in to almost click, making the whole screen a giant single select button!!! it's nice being able to see where the selection is actually going to be made too!
My next discovery was the rotatable screen..... if the phone is vertical and facing you, and then you rotate the phone 90 to either left or right, the screen will automatically correct itself to be horizontal!!! which is pretty good if you like full qwerty keyboards when writing....... and widescreen movies!!!
so after playing about with all the menu's and preloaded applications, I tried out messaging, messaging is pretty normal if vertical, it has the same keypad and alphabet arrangement as any normal phone.... just make sure you get into the habit of holding your finger on the screen for a split second before you press in because you can quite easily miss a button and the one above it was selected leading to mistakes.. but once you get the hang of it.... I never did, it's a mistake that I still make now if trying to type quickly... but, if you hold the phone horizontally, then your confronted with a full qwerty keypad, I'm sure if you had larger fingers it might become a problem..... but otherwise, it's far easier to type this way.. although crossing one thumb too far into the other thumbs territory can cause miss-selection.... getting extra symbols and numbers are easy to get to, but switching between them for things like email addresses and passwords can be a bit longwinded, but bearable most of the time....
next was the camera! it's a little small at 3.2 mp, and can be very slow between pictures, so just make sure you don't want to photograph anything moving, or in the distance, unless it's still.... I'm not too impressed with the camera to be honest... they far under powered it, considering the quality of everything else, it does let it down a bit.. although the flash is bright and makes a great torch, and the camera is perfectly clear and very good at taking pictures of still things, it serves a purpose and some memories can be captured, but not everything.... and I have lost a couple of recorded video's due to "errors" but that could have been the 8gb memory card I bought from a well known online retail agent....
Eu amo brasil e eu amo amazonia tambem..... ;)
8gb + 1gb internal ='s 9gb of memory! I have been able to convert 3 hour avi videos/DVD's into 700mb sizes and I currently have 8 full length movies on it and can fit lots of music, and can play them all perfectly, the inbuilt speaker is quite good, and better than any other phone I have ever owned... but the standard headphones that come with the phone are just ace! but what's even better, the 3.5mm jack means I can plug my hi-fi headphones, and my hi-fi into the phone to play virtually anywhere, anytime! but also, with aftermarket memory cards and readers, you can transfer it in 1 minute to a pc and listen/watch it on the 40" LCD I wished I had!
so keep in mind, quality memory card is key, that memory card and pc sync (which I never use, mentioned later) is your only real way to really make that phone shine!!!! you can throw almost anything at it, and it will know what to do! from office documents to media files... jpeg's, mp4's etc etc, and will show you them in perfect form, and as any normal LCD pc monitor could give us!
ok, so maybe you have caught on, it's a media centre phone, with office capabilities, but they are somewhere in the background.... and unfortunately it seems like to edit office documents you need to pay for the programme to do it, but you can view them with the trial download reader, and write anything up in the memo, and transfer it somehow, but I haven't the need to, so never tried....

my next feature to play with was the gps on it... but not complicated and not to long winded!... but I downloaded the Google maps feature from Google (search for "Google maps blackberry") and opened it up... after its loading and searching it finally showed me a rough location of where I was, I live in an isolated part of the UK, so signal is never great here, 2 bars on any phone, from any network, and never 3g or wireless internet..... but it gave my location to with 3-4 miles!!! ok, not so great, but not too bad considering! it really came into its own when you start moving... just pacing around the room can increase its accuracy... and when travelling I was really lost, it pinpointed my location to within 2 meters!!!!!! now that is scarily accurate! and you can zoom right in too... as you could on normal Google maps! it also has a feature so you can put yourself online and share yours and others' location to each other if they have gps phones too..... great in theory, but I'm not sure I trust that!
another great feature I use is the facebook app.... I just use it to upload photos easily and quickly online so its accessable from any pc with internet!, but you can change status updates and poke people etc.....

ok, onto the pc sync feature, the reason I never use it is because of the time it takes to go through all the menus and options, its far easier to whip the card out, into an adapter and straight into a usb port, done, no fuss! and far less crashes and memory card errors!
all I have noted are the points and facts that stand out to me, the rest may be of interest, but I don't really use much else on it at the moment... the games are ok for a while, the calculator is as good as any other calculator, viewing pictures can be a slow and painful task! I would recommend lots of folders! more than 10 high resolution pics will slow it down so much... but once it's loaded its not too bad, and with a swipe of the thumb the next picture scrolls into screen in a proper slideshow style!....

in summary, the phone is a good phone, and has enough on there for almost anyone to use comfortably without a lack of needed features! it does have it all! I suppose I should point out what it doesn't have, the list is far shorter than what it does have!!! if you want a high quality camera, walk away,
"but for everything else there's Blackberry storm!"

Summary: Great phone, ideal for anyone...

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