BlackBerry 9500 Storm is a powerful business device and a quite nice multimedia performer with touchscreen and built-in GPS.
Introduction:
The market is already full of touch operated devices and yet the competition is getting more and more intense with new phones appearing almost every day. The BlackBerry 9500 Storm offers 3.25” screen comparable in quality to that found on the pioneering iPhone. The phone also features a fast processor, GPS receiver, 3.5m stereo audio jack and document editor right out of the box.
BlackBerry 9500 Storm pros:
+ 624 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM
+ 3.15 MP autofocus camera, LED flash
+ 1 GB internal storage
+ 3.25″ 65K-color capacitive touchscreen working in 360 x 480 pixel resolution
+ Hot-swappable microSD card slot, ships with an 8GB card
+ Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and 2100 MHz 3G with HSDPA support
+ Built-in GPS and BlackBerry maps preloaded
+ Great build quality
BlackBerry 9500 Storm cons:
- Bigger than most touchscreen phones
- Interface not as quick as competitors
- No Wi-fi
- No FM radio
- No email support without BlackBerry Internet Service account
- Mediocre camera
- No Flash support
The design:
BlackBerry 9500 Storm measures 112.5 x 62.2 x 12 mm and weighs 155 grams so it is rather biggish and may be tiring when you make longer phone calls. Maybe the phone is not easy to fit in a pocket but with the 3.25-inch screen it is quite understandable.the phone is made of high quality, glossy plastics and has simple great looks. The front of the BlackBerry 9500 Storm is, of course, dominated by the 3.25” touchscreen below which you will find call and end keys. The right side of the phone houses the volume keys as well as the 3.5m standard audio jack, whereas the left side features the microUSB port and a convenience port. The top of BlackBerry 9500 Storm will show you only two keys – one for locking the screen and the other for muting the phone. The back features the 3.2 megapixel camera lens together with a LED flash and a loudspeaker.
Performance:
The voice clarity and reception are fine in BlackBerry 9500 Storm and as the phone comes with Li-Ion 1400 mAh battery it is sure to last quite a time. The display in BlackBerry 9500 Storm makes use of the capacitive technology which assures seamless and very responsive (but not too responsive) operation. The display itself is of very high quality. It shows vibrant colors with excellent contrast and brightness levels both in dim places and direct sunlight. You get three different text input methods in BlackBerry 9500 Storm: the virtual QWERTY keyboard, BlackBery SureType keypad and the regular multitap. All three are very convenient and pleasant to use with buttons large enough to minimize possible mistakes. Th.e phone handles all the most common message types, yet out of the box the the e-mail client supports only BlackBerry Internet Service.
Multimedia:
The music player in BlackBerry 9500 Storm is surprisingly good. You can sort your music library by artist, genre, or album and you can search by gradual typing. The album art is displayed and you get a few equalizer presets to choose from. The sound quality is very good, the dynamic range distortion is fine and the stereo crosstalk is superb. The video player, which may work in the landscape mode, provides neither DIvX nor XviD support out of the box which is a pity with such a large screen.
The image gallery is quite standard with zooming and panning. The former gets a bit slow sometimes but the latter works fine. The overall quality of images taken with the BlackBerry 9500 Storm is, unfortunately, not too good and very comparable to BlackBerry Bold 9000. It all starts with bad camera interface and goes on not a bit better. The entire screen works as a viewfinder but a you always have a tab with controls displayed you cannot see the entire frame that is going to be captured. The noise level in acceptable but because of advanced noise reduction system applied the images lack detail. Also the dynamic range is far from good and the only thing that works in BlackBerry 9500 Storm’ camera is color reproduction.
The BlackBerry 9500 Storm comes with a document editor right out of the box, but with no PDF support (not even viewer). Moreover, you get a nice web browser which displays pages fast and allows you to find the necessary information easily.
Menus / ease of use:
The home screen in BlackBerry 9500 Storm shows 8 large icons with shortcuts to most often used applications and features. The menu structure in BlackBerry 9500 Storm may be somewhat confusing at first and it for sure if far from iPhone’s simplicity. The phonebook is very capable and practically unlimited, but its look leaves a lot to be desired. Finding contacts is easy as the phone finds all the contacts containing the typed letters. The menu structure in BlackBerry 9500 Storm is not to bad and even if at the first glance you might experience some difficulties you should quickly learn your way through it. It is only too bad that certain submenus look as it they came from ten years ago.
Selected BlackBerry 9500 Storm features and specifications:
• 2G Network – GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• 3G Network, HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100
• 3.25-Inch TFT touchscreen – 65K colors/360 x 480 pixels
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
• MP3 & Polyphonic Ringtones
• Vibration
• 3.5 mm stereo headset jack
• 624 MHz CPU
• 128 MB RAM
• 1 GB memory plus microSDHC, microSD (TransFlash) up to 8 GB
• EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
• 3G HSDPA
• GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps
• Bluetooth v2.0
• USB v2.0
• WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g
• BlackBerry Operating System
• Instant Messaging, MMS, Email & SMS
• HTML Browser
• 3.2 MP Camera 2048×1536 pixels, flash, video and autofocus
• MP3,WMA,AAC+ Media player
• DivX, WMV, XviD, 3gp Video player
• BlackBerry maps
• A-GPS function
• DataViz document viewer – editor
• Built-in GPS
• Calculator, Voice dial, Voice memo, Built-in handsfree, Organizer
• Java
Other recently reviewed mobile phones:
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Samsung M7500 Emporio Armani, LG KF900 Prada, LG KP500 Cookie, Sony Ericsson W902, BlackBerry Curve 8900, Sony Ericsson W595, Sony Ericsson W995.