PhoneScoop: Blackberry Storm 2

[0]Hello ladies and gentleman, phonescoop here. What you are taking a look at there is an unopened BlackBerry Storm 2. What we are going to do is unbox it for you and then we will take a quick look at the Storm 2's features and we will also compare it to the original storm. So without further ado, lets dig in. We have got a plain black box here. Not much going on, probably not a final retail box. In fact I am sure its just a sample that they've sent to people in the press such as myself. We will open it up. And we can see the Storm 2 is in there. Not very securely fastened. Resting there. We have got a little cardboard piece here. And we have got a charger in this box. We have got a USB cable, and we have got stereo headphones. So not bad, you know, definitely [1]have seen more accessories come in a box. There is not even a user manual in here. So this is definitely not a final consumer box. So not a whole lot going on with that. So since there is not a lot of interesting things in the box, lets take a look at the phone itself. There it is, the Storm 2 from Research in Motion. Lets dive in and see what its all about. At first glance, the Storm 2 looks almost identical to the original Storm. Almost nearly as same in shape, layout, configuration, size and weight. We have got, you know, similarly placed buttons in hardware, and basically you can see for yourself, the similarities are pretty stark. But concentrating on the Storm 2, you can see that the entire front panel is now one large button. There is no [2]separation here between the buttons along the bottom. These are four distinct keys on the face of the glass. The capacitive screen there. Taking a look at the rest of the phone you can see on the left here we have got just a application key. This key is actually a little bit mushy but it has a rubber top to it. So its easily found with your thumb. We have the microUSB port there. Nothing along the bottom. On the right we have got several different keys Got a user definable application key here. You can use this to launch the camera, to launch the email program pretty much whatever you want. And we have got a volume toggle here This also feels a little bit mushy but again its coated in rubber and is easy to find with your thumb. On the back, you can see we have the 3.2MP camera as well as a flash to help [3]make for better picture taking. And a little bit difficult to see in the top, but to sort of switch things around. Looks like the power key is here now. Before it was on the front face of the phone. My guess is this doubles as a power and lock key and we have got the ever present silent switch to turn off the ringer. When you have got an incoming call. And as with the original we will peel this back, and you can see we have got a SIM card here for use in GSM networks overseas and the slot for the microSD card goes there. So this is pretty similar to the original in most respects. With just some subtle changes. And of course, you will notice the different accents. You got silver on the original and black on the new one. And you know, like, the buttons here are silver and the buttons here are black, but otherwise you know for all intents and purposes it looks almost identical. Oh and of course I forgot to mention [4]the 3.5mm headset jack on the top right of the phone for your stereo headset listening pleasure. So now that we have taken a quick scan at the hardware, lets dive in and see if RIM made any changes to the software on the Storm 2. So after playing with the Storm 2 for just a few moments off camera, I can say immediately and without any doubt that it is a far superior product to the original Storm that was released back in November of 2008. Perhaps the most noticeable and biggest improvement is just the regular performance of the device how it reacts. You can see instantaneous reaction to my finger as I move across it and make selections and try to interact with the phone. We have also got some nice animations, for you know, opening applications. And you can just see it, it is just blazing fast Responds really well to my thumb and the way I touch. [5]Now of course this screen still is a sheer press screen. There are four actuators under this screen compared to the single actuator that was under the screen on the original Storm And that makes it more responsive to presses and better able to localize where you are exactly pressing on the screen itself. So for example, we will type a message, we will type a new message to myself here. And you can see, as I brought this up, that it is the shared press style QWERTY keyboard. You know, we have already send two messages here. I am going to just quickly type up another one. And you can see how well the Storm responds to typing compared to the original. So, there it figured out phonescoop pretty well. There I got it right. You know, I typed, this is a [6]much better phone than the original. And of course, if you want to interact with the full QWERTY, you can just turn sideways, and it works just the same. And hitting the return key will send off the email. You know, you can type this way too So this is how you will type in landscape mode. So, yeah, OK, so I made one mistake but otherwise not bad at all. We have got smileys here that we can dump in there. We can put in anything we want, and off it goes. The typing experience, I cant stress enough, is vastly, vastly improved. Compared to the original Storm. The screen itself doesnt need to travel as far for each successive click, and because of that your thumbs get less tired when typing And of course you could see how quickly it reacts to be [7]turned on its side, and it reacts almost instantly. With the other Storm, the original Storm you sometimes had to wait up to 5 seconds for the thing to react. You know, we got the same access to all the media here. Media player looks about the same, you got songs, you have got videos, looks like they loaded some trailers in there. Back out to the main screen we will jump into the main menu. We have got all typical controls and Verizon applications here. They have preloaded Slacker it looks like and VCast Rhapsody, VCast Song ID, My Verizon which is an account controlling program. Its own mapping program, thats not Google Maps there. They have got VZ Navigator here of course. Instant messaging, all here, you have got Windows, Yahoo, Google, AIM and Blackberry messenger. And of course you have got the camera. Downloads is where anything you grab from the BlackBerry apps will go. You can see some preloaded applications. Of course these are productivity based applications [8]Word To Go, Sheet To Go, Slide To Go, so you can interact with Word documents and you know, its got some games on there and thats it. Its much much better device. There is no other way to say it. Its easy to use. It reacts as it is supposed to. And it feels better designed, more well thought out, and more refined when compared to the original Storm. So the Storm 2, available from Verizon wireless, packing 3G, GSM for roaming on European networks, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and a much better operating system. Storm 2, Verizon wireless, there it is folks.


Channel: phonescoop