Blackberry - Storm Cell Phone Review

This review concerns the Blackberry Storm.  It is a great, functional touch screen product.  There are some apps that do not work with the touch screen, so you want to be careful before you buy and always read the app reviews first.  It could have more games, which would be a nice way to keep my kids occupied in the car or in the grocery store, but they like the two games it does come with.  Additionally, the sound and picture quality is great when watching videos and listening to music.  We were able to take advantage of the Buy one get one free offer from Verizon Wireless, which also made this phone very reasonably priced in comparison to other blackberry devices.  Once you get used to touch screen it's very intuitive and it's nice to have the ability to turn the screen sideways for a better view.  I would put it up against the I Phone, but there are not enough apps to compare it with yet.  As the phone becomes more popular, hopefully there will be more apps available, but there is a great site that has a lot of information for new users. I love how quickly I receive my emails on this phone, and I was able to set it up to accept two email accounts.  Sometimes I get the emails on the phone before I get them on my actual email account. The browser function works great with most websites.  There is an upgrade that you do need to do for it to work better.  Some sites won't let you click on links without the upgrade.  It was a free upgrade however. It is easy to text or blackberry instant message from this phone.  My husband and I stay in direct connect with the blackberry instant messaging.  He can even respond during meetings. The contacts function is great with lots of space for lots of information and allows for quite a few contacts. The calendar function is nice, but could be a lot better.  If you could sync two calendars together that would be helpful for both families and small business owners.  It appears that blackberry used to have an app for this, but they no longer have one now. I do not like one major function of the phone, but I am getting used to it.  When you begin dialing, it does not bring up the rest of the number.  You either have to go through contacts to get a number or you have to hit a button that shows your last several calls, both incoming and outgoing, in order to find a number.  Or you can dial it from memory.  My last phone had a feature where, once you started dialing, it would bring up the rest of the number automatically and you didn't have to scroll through the whole phone.  However, not having that feature does limit the number of times that I try to dial while I'm driving, which is a good thing, I guess. The speaker phone quality is good.  I do not use a blue tooth but I will use the speaker phone while driving and have had no problems with it at all. In regards to applications, I have found that the facebook application on the blackberry storm is a very good one.  Much better than my old phone with Sprint.  When someone calls in, the facebook application even pulls up the photo of the caller if they have a facebook page with a photo linked to it.  I am able to change my facebook status easily and view updated status' easily as well.  It also provides a separate tone for when you receive a facebook message and displays the facebook message differently on your front screen. The download section stores all of the applications that you can download, either from the blackberry app world that you can install on your blackberry storm or from other blackberry download sites.  I have not tried many additional sites, but I am sure there are many for new users looking for more apps.  There are a lot of free apps to choose from.  One of my favorites is Pandora.  There are a lot of different music downloads, but I have found Pandora easy to use with the widest range of music available.  The sound quality is very good and I enjoy listening through my phone when there are no other options available.  However, it does use your battery up pretty quickly.Speaking of batteries, the blackberry storm does not save battery power in any way shape or form.  If you are used to having a phone that you do not have to plug in evrey night, then this is not the phone for you.  You will have to plug it in every night, and depending on usage, sometimes during the day.  If I take 2 or 3 calls that are over 25 or 30 minutes - then my battery is fairly drained.  If you like to play video games on your phone, you will definitely need to recharge the battery during the day at some point.  There is an ESPN download app as well as a calorie counting app that works quite well.  It has a lot of options of food items to choose from and helps you keep track of your daily calories. There is a great GPS program called VZ navigator which stays updated with routes and provides voice direction in addition to visual direction.  This does cost a bit more, but is worth it if you don't have your own GPS unit in your car already and need to know where you are or how to get around a traffic problem.  The biggest problem I have had with this phone from the beginning and it may have something to do with the number of times I've dropped it so you may want to consider investing in a hard plastic covering to protect your substantial investment, it does freeze up and has to be rebooted.  I do this by removing the battery, waiting a few seconds, and replacing it.  It takes several minutes for the reboot to work again, but then all is well.  You may also find it annoying that even if you turn off your phone, it will catch you up on all of your missed emails all at once.