Phones.com » Cell Phones » Review of the Blackberry Storm 9500

The storm is without doubt inspired by modern day touchscreen phones that have a mass appeal. It is not another direct competitor to the iPhone but just RIM's innovation to cater to a wider audience. The handset is finished in glossy plastic on the front and armed with a metallic back cover. It is a very heavy handset weighing in at 155 grams. Weight of the handset is complemented by the thickness of the Storm which is 14mm. While the Storm lacks any physical keypad, the virtual keyboard was the closest to a real one. The capacitive touchscreen coupled with the best of haptic feedback, offered a great typing experience on the Storm's virtual on-screen keyboard. Below the large 3.25 portrait screen are four hardware buttons for Call, End, Menu and Back functions. On the right hand side of the Blackberry 9000 are the volume keys and a 3.5 mm standard audio port. The Blackberry Storm is a well designed handset thats comfortable to hold and use as well as slides easily into a pants pocket.

The Storm has no grudges against the hundreds of touchscreens offered by every mobile phone company today. It intends to be a unique blackberry, with a distinct full-touch design. One of the design landmarks of the Blackberry Storm is its 3.25" display with the unusual resolution of 360x640 pixels. This display has an exact 4:3 display ratio unlike the iPhone and helps get a symmetric view of images or video clips. The Storm has 1 GB of onboard storage and is powered by a 624 MHz CPU with 128 MB of RAM. The microSD slot allows to expand user memory by as much as 32 GB. The Blackberry Storm allows you to playback any popular video or audio format on the pleasure-to-watch screen. The touch experience was enhanced by the SurePress technology, which makes use of the capacitive touchscreen to avoid accidental pressing of buttons. The built-in GPS and preloaded Blackberry Maps make the Storm a fully functional navigator. Web browsing on the Storm 9500 was top-notch, unlike on any other touchscreen handsets we've seen. We hated the lack of Flash support though.

The Blackberry Storm or 9500 is a Quad-band GSM with UMTS/HSDPA 2100. Which means you can use it anywhere 2G connectivity is available. 3G connectivity with HSDPA up to 3.6 Mbps is available in Europe and Asia Pacific on the 2100 MHz. The Storm also supports EDGE Class 10 and GPRS connectivity wherever available. On the local connectivity side, it is equipped with Bluetooth 2.0 EDR and A2DP. USB Full speed is supported for PC connections. The Storm strangely leaves out Wi-Fi capability.

The blackberry Storm 9500 is powered by a large 1400 mAh Li-ion battery. It is expected to provide decent back up for normal users. Blackberry rates it with a 5-and-half hours of talk time and 15 day standby time.

The Blackberry Storm has come down in price since its arrival, but still sells for over 350 dollars. This is very affordable, for anybody who wants a feature-rich handset that is also reliable and strong for rugged usage. Moreover, the blackberry factor is there; except for lack of Wi-Fi or a better camera.