A Few Minutes with the Blackberry Storm

My brother-in-law brought over his new Blackberry Storm yesterday when he and his family came over for Thanksgiving dinner. I only got to spend a few minutes with it, but here are some impressions:

• iPhone users will take some adjusting to use the Storm's screen. Just touching the screen doesn't do anything. You have to PUSH to make it click. Overcoming iPhone learned behavior to use a competing touch screen product is just one more hurdle to clear.
• Blackberry users will miss the keyboard. My brother-in-law switched from the Pearl to the Storm and says he's adapting just fine. The onscreen keyboard switches from Pearl-style true-type keyboard in Portrait mode to full QWERTY in landscape mode. Neat trick, but my wife, who recently got a Curve, didn't think the onscreen keyboard was as good as typing on her keyboard. I agree.
• The touch screen UI is pretty cool overall. iPhone users will appreciate swiping the screen to scroll up and down. The UI is a bit inconsistent however. I seemed to have to switch between pushing hardware buttons and selecting options on screen to do commands. It wasn't always clear what I was supposed to do to get a menu of options. I found it was pretty much trial and error. iPhone definitely wins on intuitiveness.
• Music is a mixed bag with this device. Although I knew the Storm wouldn't play DRM-protected music from iTunes, my brother-in-law didn't understand that. As RIM markets devices to consumers, it needs to be prepared for the fact that its customers aren't all blog-reading, friendfeeding, technogeeks. It's just music to these customers. If it won't play, that's the device's fault unless you help them understand it better. Is there supposed to be some sort of cover-flow type interface on the music player? If so, we couldn't figure it out.

I only spent a few minutes with this device, but it's not for me. To be honest, I'm getting tired of touchscreens. After a year of the iPhone, I bought a Nokia E71 because it had a keyboard and I can use my existing iphone data plan with it but get 3G speed. Clearly, I'm not the target customer for this device. Overlooking that for a moment, as a touchscreen device, it is cool but not as cool as the iPhone. As a Blackberry, it's good but not as good as the Bold or even the Curve for basic Blackberry functionalitty. It's just sort of in-between on both counts. Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary. Have a safe and fun Black Friday!