BlackBerry Storm
Feb. 1st, 2009 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarrick"BlackBerry Shit-Storm" more like it.
When this this was announced in the summer it looked like it was going to be über-cool and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.
But wait I did. For months. I signed up for news on the release date and waited. "Out in time for Christmas" I was promised.
I finally received notice that it was being released in mid-December and went down to my local Bell store at the first opportunity to have a look at one. They didn't have any. Sure, technically, it was "released" - they released a grand-total of one-hundred devices in British Columbia, fifty to Telus and fifty to Bell. Naturally they all went to insiders and no store in the province actually saw a device. "Try back in January, we'll have some for real then."
So, I go back in mid-January. Nothing yet. A week later I get a notice from the news I signed up for saying offering me a $50 credit if I got one before January 31. So I went back into the store, coupon in hand, and go told "try again next week."
The next week, on the 31st, I went back and got one. For real this time. And today, February 1st, I took it back for a refund.
As hyped, the touch-screen is nice and big, and the clicky tactile feedback worked and felt quite like pressing real buttons. What put me off fast was the "keyboard."
When held in landscape mode you get a full QWERTY keyboard, and it is bigger than what you get on a Curve or a Bold - this was a plus I was looking forward to, since I have large hands. However, trying to type with any speed was impossible. On a regular BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard I can type reasonably fast using both of my thumbs. The Storm keyboard, being essentially one big button, means lifting one thumb completely from the keyboard before pressing the next virtual key. So much as resting on the surface, even if it's not with enough pressure to highlight they virtual key beneath (the keys "light up" as you touch the screen so you can see exactly which virtual key you are about to press) causes the screen to not register the click from the other thumb. Effectively you are reduced to typing with one digit, halving the speed with which you can type.
If that's not bad enough, the QWERTY keyboard is simply not available in all applications, most notably doing address lookups in the phone application. Only one of my third-party applications allowed the QWERTY keyboard to be used in landscape mode. The phone application and the other third-party applications leave you stuck with the Pearl-like "Quick Type" keyboard (and why is it that marketing weasels, ever since the naming of Greenland, love so much to give crappy things cutesy names that are the complete and total opposite to how one would describe the thing in real life? Is anybody every fooled by this?) And while the great big screen afforded by not having a real keyboard looks good when reading e-mail, being able to respond is half the point of having a BlackBerry. In both landscape and portrait mode the virtual keyboard takes up so much screen real-estate that what you are left with is reminiscent of the first-generation BlackBerry pagers. Basically, you are stuck with a twice the size, twice as hard to type on BlackBerry Perl with half the useful screen area for twice the money. No thanks.
Being a photographer, I might have been swayed if the camera was half-decent. But that sucks, too. Sure it's 3.2 megapixels, but 3.2 megapixels of the exact same crappy, fuzzy, grainy, visual garbage that I get from my old Curve. I have fifteen-year-old sub-megapixel cameras that take clearer, more usable pictures. Another fail.
The web browser impressed me for about a minute, after loading a nice little rendering of a CSS and AJAX heavy page that I didn't expect to work at all. Then I tried to navigate and found the thing zooming when I didn't want it to, not zooming when I *did* want it to, not registering clicks, and... not bringing up the QWERTY keyboard when I wanted to fill in a field!
Get an Apple iPhone, get a BlackBerry Bold, stick with your BlackBerry Curve, pretty much do anything but get a BlackBerry (Shit)Storm.
When this this was announced in the summer it looked like it was going to be über-cool and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.
But wait I did. For months. I signed up for news on the release date and waited. "Out in time for Christmas" I was promised.
I finally received notice that it was being released in mid-December and went down to my local Bell store at the first opportunity to have a look at one. They didn't have any. Sure, technically, it was "released" - they released a grand-total of one-hundred devices in British Columbia, fifty to Telus and fifty to Bell. Naturally they all went to insiders and no store in the province actually saw a device. "Try back in January, we'll have some for real then."
So, I go back in mid-January. Nothing yet. A week later I get a notice from the news I signed up for saying offering me a $50 credit if I got one before January 31. So I went back into the store, coupon in hand, and go told "try again next week."
The next week, on the 31st, I went back and got one. For real this time. And today, February 1st, I took it back for a refund.
As hyped, the touch-screen is nice and big, and the clicky tactile feedback worked and felt quite like pressing real buttons. What put me off fast was the "keyboard."
When held in landscape mode you get a full QWERTY keyboard, and it is bigger than what you get on a Curve or a Bold - this was a plus I was looking forward to, since I have large hands. However, trying to type with any speed was impossible. On a regular BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard I can type reasonably fast using both of my thumbs. The Storm keyboard, being essentially one big button, means lifting one thumb completely from the keyboard before pressing the next virtual key. So much as resting on the surface, even if it's not with enough pressure to highlight they virtual key beneath (the keys "light up" as you touch the screen so you can see exactly which virtual key you are about to press) causes the screen to not register the click from the other thumb. Effectively you are reduced to typing with one digit, halving the speed with which you can type.
If that's not bad enough, the QWERTY keyboard is simply not available in all applications, most notably doing address lookups in the phone application. Only one of my third-party applications allowed the QWERTY keyboard to be used in landscape mode. The phone application and the other third-party applications leave you stuck with the Pearl-like "Quick Type" keyboard (and why is it that marketing weasels, ever since the naming of Greenland, love so much to give crappy things cutesy names that are the complete and total opposite to how one would describe the thing in real life? Is anybody every fooled by this?) And while the great big screen afforded by not having a real keyboard looks good when reading e-mail, being able to respond is half the point of having a BlackBerry. In both landscape and portrait mode the virtual keyboard takes up so much screen real-estate that what you are left with is reminiscent of the first-generation BlackBerry pagers. Basically, you are stuck with a twice the size, twice as hard to type on BlackBerry Perl with half the useful screen area for twice the money. No thanks.
Being a photographer, I might have been swayed if the camera was half-decent. But that sucks, too. Sure it's 3.2 megapixels, but 3.2 megapixels of the exact same crappy, fuzzy, grainy, visual garbage that I get from my old Curve. I have fifteen-year-old sub-megapixel cameras that take clearer, more usable pictures. Another fail.
The web browser impressed me for about a minute, after loading a nice little rendering of a CSS and AJAX heavy page that I didn't expect to work at all. Then I tried to navigate and found the thing zooming when I didn't want it to, not zooming when I *did* want it to, not registering clicks, and... not bringing up the QWERTY keyboard when I wanted to fill in a field!
Get an Apple iPhone, get a BlackBerry Bold, stick with your BlackBerry Curve, pretty much do anything but get a BlackBerry (Shit)Storm.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 03:37 am (UTC)It looks like an Iphone but it has a little thin slider out of the bottom with a full qwerty keyboard. http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/#tab1
I am waiting for this to come out.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 04:24 am (UTC)I keep forgetting to call you about the hosting. I don't run my own hosting services anymore, but if you are just looking for advice I can help with that.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 05:18 am (UTC)I believe that the Pre is supposed to be with palm OS and not windows mobile. But for my own information, what is the problem that you have with Microsoft OS on the phone? is it specific for your or the OS as a whole?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 08:22 pm (UTC)BTW, so far my brief experience with the Storm has been very poor - so poor in fact that I've slammed it repeatedly on my blog and my podcast.
I was finally given a bonafine review unit for a month, which I'm evaluating right now (it's a Verizon Wireless branded one). The firmware on this one is better, but still buggy.
As for the camera, I disagree with you - sure it's no match for even a point-and shoot, but the 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera on the Storm is decent, and better than every other current 3.2 megapixel auto-focus cameraphone on the market (the T-Mobile G1 Android phone, and the Nokia 5800 Symbian touch-screen phone - both of which I've reviewed). Here's a picture I took with the Storm lat night:
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnkgrl/3248638732/
The original Curve camera was also better than most other 2 megapixel fixed-focus cemaraphones on the market at the time:
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnkgrl/1480473045/in/set-72157602259167341/
The Bold uses the same camera as the original Curve. The updated Curve (BlackBerry 89xx) uses the same camera as the Storm.
I realize you're coming from a pro camera perspective, but I've made cameraphones my primary cameras for a few years now and some (like Nokia and SOny Ericsson's 5 megapixel auto-focus models with xenon flash and glass optics) rival point-and-shoots.
The bottom line: it's quite possible to take great pictures with a cameraphone - you just have to learn to work within the limitations :)
Here's a good example of a nice picture taken with my Nokia N95:
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnkgrl/2207212559/in/set-72157600048630570/
Also don't underestimate the ability to have a decent camera with you wherever your phone goes, to geo-tag pictures, to upload pictures to Flickr on-the-go, and to stream live video to the web!
Check out my blog for cameraphone reviews and my flickr sets:
- http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnkgrl/sets/
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 08:24 pm (UTC)PS: the original Curve camera was about the same quality as th iPhone - the Storm camera is better than the iPhone. The iPhone user experience is miles ahead of the Storm, however :)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 09:05 pm (UTC)Where all of these cameras differentiate most noticeably is in lower-light situations. I've taken decent pictures with my curve outside in the daylight, but you know me - how often am I taking pictures outside in the daylight? The light-collecting ability of these tiny CCD's is physically limited (no matter how many pixels you cram on the chip, only so many photons are going to hit it during a given exposure) so it ends up being a function of the software rather than the capability of the CCD. Either you collect more light with a longer exposure - which invites blurry pictures since it's difficult to hold an object so small and light still; or you crank the gain to simulate a higher IS0/ASA value - which results in noise. Cramming more pixels on a tiny sensor has it's own problems. iPhones, in a typically unique, despite having the same sensor, do a neat trick with multiple exposures in thin bands scanning across the image during the same "exposure", essentially creating multiple-exposure composites with a crapload of averaging to correct for noise (which is something commonly done in astronomical photography, and IRL leads to interesting effects like this (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kt/2634485664/) and this (http://www.flickr.com/photos/31058036@N07/2980864379/).)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 09:47 pm (UTC)Read this blog entry where I compare the T-Mobile G1 camera with the Nokia 5800 camera (both 3.2 megapixel auto-focus (the latter using Zeiss optics:
- http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/pictures-taken-with-the-nokia-5800/
As you can see, the Storm's low-light performance is better than the two devices mentioned above.
Of course, I never shoot pictures of people in low light, so I can frame the shot and keep still :)
Small correction... Cameraphones all use CMOS sensors nowadays, not CCD sensors. CMOS sensors are much noisier in low light!
There are very few cameraphones with CCD sensors. I reviewed an obscure 5 megapixel Thai model with auto focus and xenon flash a couple years ago (the i-mobile 902), and it was surprisingly capable in low light:
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnkgrl/396895903/in/set-72157594525826478/
CCD/CMOS
Date: 2009-02-02 09:54 pm (UTC)Re: CCD/CMOS
Date: 2009-02-02 10:03 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, the trend of slimming down devices is not making things better for cameraphones - the sensors are getting smaller and noisier!
For example, Nokia's latest crop of 5 megapixel über-phones have the same published specs and features as the older flagships, but the cameras are getting worse: low light performance is definitely getting worse.
Samsung and LG are rolling out some 8 megapixel cameraphones with decent published specs and optics - I'll keep you posted on low-light performance...
CMOS sensors are here to stay despite being noisier (they are now being used in some high-end DSLRs) - they are cheaper to make than CCD sensors and more power efficient.
That's all I know :)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 10:16 pm (UTC)Multitouch allows you to finish pressing a "key" white starting to press another "key" and still have the "keys" register in order. SurePress (the clickable screen on the Storm) completely fails at this!
The iPhone would be even better with haptics (wherein the vibration motor gets actuated briefly for each "key" press, giving the user feedback). The Nokia 5800 does this, but its on-screen keyboard is flawed for other reasons.
Re: CCD/CMOS
Date: 2009-02-02 10:21 pm (UTC)Re: CCD/CMOS
Date: 2009-02-02 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 10:36 pm (UTC)Seems the "friendlier" devices and software try to be the more they make the wrong assumptions about what I actually want to do. Fortunately I have a working rotary phone and a typewriter ;-)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 03:17 am (UTC)