BlackBerry Storm 2 9520

 

 It tries to fix the problems of the original Storm. But can it catch up with the smartphones of today?

Sexy design, crisp and bright screen, unique clickable screen has better usability than the original Storm, good camera

The clickable screen may not appeal to all, laggy behaviour at times, no DivX/XviD playback support despite it having an awesome screen

When the iPhone was first released, it was looked upon as a 'fun' phone for rich people. Hardcore business professionals still preferred their Blackberrys. It was only after an iPhone OS update or two did people realize the potential of it being a business-friendly phone. People got accustomed to typing on the capacitive touchscreen as fast as they could on the QWERTY board of a Blackberry. The iPhone had crossed over to RIM's territory, which had already gained iconic status.

People realized that along with good e-mail support, they also needed a big screen to browse the web or, for example, use a mapping application. Research in Motion (RIM) realized this too. But mimicking an iPhone wasn't their style. They wanted to create something unique, they wanted to offer the 'clickability' of a button and the real estate of a touchscreen. RIM tried to do all this with the Storm but it pretty much failed.

The Blackberry Storm was their first full touchscreen phone that implemented a clickable screen. Unfortunately, the effect that RIM wanted to deliver didn't materialize. So RIM went back to the drawing board and brought out a successor, the Blackberry Storm 2 9520. RIM has tried really hard to fix the flaws of the first Storm. Let's see if they have  succeeded.

Design and Build

The Storm 2's design is similar to the original Storm. It looks really sexy with its dark grey metallic border and plush back cover. The design of the phone feels very nice while holding it in your palm. The curved top and base give it a unique appeal as well. Overall, I felt like somebody "big and important" while using the Storm 2. Some people seem to suggest that the phone feels bulky, but I really didn't mind that. The device feels quite sturdy as well. The only thing that spoils the show is its unwanted affinity for fingerprints. But we've now come to expect this from every touchscreen phone we see, so the Storm 2 is not really the only culprit here. 

The two major differences from the earlier model are; the buttons at the bottom are now flushed into the screen's covering. Second, and the most major innovative improvement, is the SurePress touchscreen. The first Storm didn't appeal to people because the entire screen was like one giant button. It didn't offer great usability. With the Storm 2 though, the screen uses a piezo-electronic layer that can recognize touch pressure at multiple simultaneous points rather than the single, central hardware button of the first-gen Storm.

So has this technology improved the screen's usability? Yes, of course. After the first few odd minutes of getting used to "pressing" the screen, what follows is a smooth operation. Every point on the screen you press, you actually get the feeling of pressing a dedicated button. It's actually quite surreal. It's a rather interesting way to use it for text input. But more on that later. The capacitive touchscreen also provides accurate user input. The 3.25-inch screen is a wee bit smaller than the iPhone's. But the higher pixel density makes it look damn good. The clarity is great - text as well as imagery looks crisp on the screen. It's quite bright and is fairly visible even under bright sunlight. 

The two corners at the top are actually a power-cum-keylock and mute buttons, flushed into the curves. The mute button also pauses the music, which is a nice touch. Like all BlackBerrys', a status indicator LED next to the earpiece announces multiple events; like missed calls/messages, battery indication etc. The best part is that this LED is also used by third party apps. So, if I get a reply in an Instant messaging app when it is minimized, the light blinks.

The volume buttons and a 3.5mm headphone jack are to the right. I would have liked the headphone jack to be at the top since the wire protrudes from the side when I put the phone in my pocket. The voice command button and microUSB slot are to the left. The camera sensor and a photo assist LED light are placed at the back. The microSD card slot is under the battery cover, but is hot-swappable.

Overall, I was quite happy with the build and design of the Storm 2.

User Interface

The Storm 2 runs the Blackberry OS version 5.0. The User Interface looks pretty slick and quite unique. The USP of any Blackberry - e-mail - is present in its fullest form on the device. Text messages are shown in a threaded form, which is nice. Basic PIM (Personal Information Management) tools like Calendar, Notes, a To-do list are also part of the system. The Blackberry browser is optimized for the touchscreen. You can pan around regular websites or navigate the pointer arrow. There's no multi-touch zooming, one has to simply click an area to zoom into it. Browsing full-fledged websites was laggy at times. The same was the case when I used Opera Mini to surf the web. Wi-Fi, which was not present in the Storm 1, has thankfully been added to the Storm 2.

The advantage of the unique touchscreen is that one can highlight any element on the screen, which does not result in any action. To generate the action, the screen has to be clicked. This can reduce erroneous clicking at times. However, on the other hand, if you don't click dead-center on that area, there's a good chance that a nearby element might get pressed.

Talking about the USP of this device (i.e. messaging), text can be input via three types of keyboard. One is a standard alpha-numeric keypad, the second is a half-QWERTY, and the third is a full-QWERTY. The accelerometer automatically switches to full QWERTY when the phone is oriented in landscape. The half-QWERTY is very convenient to use in portrait mode, especially for one-handed typing. Clicking the screen to type was a bit alien at first, but with practice I was able to type at a fair pace. Word suggestion helped here. While this unique technology tries to bring the best of both worlds, it still does not manage to beat the comfort of a real QWERTY keyboard, like the one on the Bold series. Nor is the input as accurate as text-entry on the iPhone.

While the feeling of pressing the screen to type was acceptable to me, it may not be so for some. Especially if that someone is used to the feather-touch required to type on an iPhone (or any good capacitive-screened phone).

The media player is typical in its working. Music is sorted according to artists, albums, etc. The past few Blackberry models like the Bold 9000 or the Curve 8900 were endowed with DivX/XviD video playback support. It is unfortunate that the Storm 2 officially does not support these formats anymore. We tried to play a few files of the format, and they did play, but with a bad lag. This feature could have made great use of that crisp, bright big screen but sadly does not.

It comes with a basic version of a mobile office suite that lets you open Word, Excel and Power-point files, but not edit them. The App world is decently designed and has a fair number of applications -- although that number isn't as mammoth as the millions of apps on the iPhone App store.

The overall operation, although not as smooth as the iPhone or the Nexus One, ran at an acceptable pace. The phone did manage to erroneously stop, hang on a couple of occassions, and I had to pull the battery out for a hard reset. But I'm sure a software update should take care of bugs in the future (since Blackberry is known to be apt with releasing updates).

Performance

Call quality

We tried this phone using a GSM network. Expectedly, the call clarity of the Storm 2 is pretty good. The speaker is audible enough for conversations over the loudspeaker. The network reception was spot on as well.

Multimedia

The 3.2 megapixel sensor takes good snaps. The pictures produced were fairly clear. The small LED flash light actually brightens up a dark environment fairly well for close-range objects. The camera options has a typical set of settings like White balance and color effect. Image stabilization is featured in the list. The audio quality via the default pair of earbuds is just about acceptable. You'd rather want to switch to a better pair if you want to enjoy music on it. 

Battery Life

The Storm 2 is fitted with a 1400 mAh battery. In our tests, on a full charge, it lasted for slightly over a day under heavy usage. Heavy usage included a couple of hours of phone-calls, use of features like the camera, web browsing, chatting etc. The battery life is just about acceptable. Old Blackberry customers will be disappointed by this figure, since typical QWERTY based Blackberrys last more than this. 

Price and Verdict

The Storm 2 9520 sells for Rs. 31,990. So, should you buy the Storm 2?

If you are keen on using Blackberry's services (like push-email), and want a full touchscreen phone, then the Storm 2 is a decent buy, and is a much better buy than its predecessor. It's unique clickable screen is something not everyone may like. It pretty much depends on an individual. I liked it, but I suggest you try it before you buy it.

Considering its price, how does it compare to the iPhone or the Nexus One? Well, it's safe to say that the Storm 2 still has some catching up to do with respect to its Operating System and third party apps, in order to match up to these guys. So, if you're not keen on using BlackBerry's services, then an iPhone or the Nexus One would serve you better.