Blackberry Storm2 9520 Review
The RIM, a Canadian Smartphone maker has unveiled a innovative touch screen handset called Blackberry Storm 2 9520. It had replaced the RIM’s iconic Querty keyboard what its previous version had offered, with the new improved clicking touchscreen technology. It also comes with new operating system named Black Berry OS 5, which is much more fast and improved. They have also included Wi-Fi this time which was not there in earlier BlackBerry mobile. Though its touch screen is not good as its rival, too sensitive, but one must appreciate for the security does Blackberry offers.
Typical Blackberry Features
Blackberry is known for its unique mobile architecture; mobile email, RIM’s Querty keyboard. Blackberry had come with new touchscreen to compete with other smartphones.
The Storm 2 does offer reliable email security same as the earlier phones. You can put the phone in to real time mode, if any new thing arrives, it will be automatically notify you. All the data in blackberry is encrypted in other format, it is difficult to crack the data for other person, ensuring high security. For that, you need to have sign Blackberry-specific contract to avail it.
The Storm 2 has good feature i.e. it merges all contacts into one single place. Each e-mail accounts will have their own inboxes and as well as, there is a super inbox which combines all your mails, you need not check each inbox accounts. You view the both Orkut and Facebook messages at super-inbox at a time. The address book is well working with all the email accounts and also with social websites such as Facebook and Orkut.
Touchscreen & Keyboard
The Storm 2 has larger display of 3.25 inch and comes with new bright and lucrative touchscreen. The Strom 2 provides very good resolution of 480 x 360 pixels. Display is TFT, supporting 65000 colors. Blackberry have not altered the size, measuring 112.5 x 62.2 x 14 mm, but slightly heavier at 160g.It comes with electro-mechanical controls, it is used to feed the input i.e. interpreting touch requests, where earlier it was purely mechanical. Four sensors are placed at each corner of the screen, which facilitates accurate response for User’s touch screen request. The on screen keyboard is not so bad, but we certainly the miss the glory of Querty keyboard.
Since the presence of electro-mechanical controls, you experience physical response from keboard. You can verify a key before you commit that key. It doesn’t offer the shortcuts for numbers and symbols, in earlier cases it was done easily using ALT key, but here you have to press a button and skip to another keyboard. It also enables you to enter multiple keys at a time, upper-case letters can be entered by holding shift key for some time. It will also helps in preventing wear and tear in the long run, But it slows down the typing speed. The SurePress screen will benefit those who feels difficulty in touchscreen typing and for those who want some feed while typing as well.
The Storm 2 doesn’t have physical buttons for send, menu, return and end call. They have integrated it in touchscreen itself.
Other features
The Storm 2 is powered by new operating “Black Berry OS 5”, which offers kinetic scrolling enables easier handling of longer lists. OS is better optimized to make the device feel snappier and easier user interface. It also updated with much faster automatic rotation. Storm 2 is very stable and pretty, lagging is rare. The performance of the phone is very much satisfactory. RIM have not revealed about its CPU, but it is faster than its predecessor.
On the left side, the storm 2 hosts a microUSB port and one of the convenience keys. The main default function of convenience key is voice controls, later you can change it according to your need. There is another convenience key present on right side, a two step button, which lets you to operate auto focus camera. You can modify its functionality if you do not need shortcut for camera. It has built in 2GB micros card, you store the data, video and music files in it. A 3.5mm jack and volume are also present on the right side. The speaker’s location is move from rear of the phone to bottom of the mobile, so that we can grip the phone easily thanks to its curvy shape. Audio quality is very good and volume is also pretty high, similar to its previous phones. It does not have FM radio. Storm 2 has decent video player with large screen, which offers good picture quality. It supports all the popular video formats like 3GP,MPEG ,DivX and XviD. It also comes with Blackberry App World which hosts many video and music application. It indeed offers seven applications for free of cost.
Photo library has not altered; it provides 100% zoom to actual size short cut, enabling quick and easy way to review photos in detail. Storm 2 is equipped with 3 megapixel camera including a LED flash and surprisingly picture quality is not so satisfactory. Camera provides some basic editing functions like white balance, color effects, image-geotagging and digital image stabilization.
Connectivity
The Storm 2 has GSM/GPRS/EDGE support, provides global roaming. It gives you extra speed with the support of 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA. It supports Wi-Fi, which has customizable Wi-Fi manager which manages all the other connections. It also supports Bluetooth with A2DP.
The web browser is designed in such a way that it avoids accidental clicking of links and flicking through menus and lists as well. Page rendering is good, operate with certain gestures as well and supports zooming by simply tapping. It doesn’t have flash support for we browser and falls short comparing with other android phones. But browser is quiet comfortable to work upon.
Final word
The Storm 2 is another stunning blackberry phones which has some innovative features like large touch screen with electro-mechanical response. Welcome move come by RIM to enter the touchscreen Smartphone market. It will be appreciated for typical blackberry features like reliability and email security. It is priced at 430 pounds or nearly $700.
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Rally informative post. Best wishes.Thanks..
love this phone. used to live in the U.S. where it was verizon and it was terrible. definately love the gsm version better. better touch screen, faster processor, love surfing the net. me and my wife love it. got 2 off of gsmauthority.com and couldn’t be happier. 2 thumbs up