Blackberry Storm - A Match to iPhone or is it not? Read on...

Phone Hardware

1. Blackberry Storm is RIM’s answer to Apple’s iPhone. It’s also Blackberry’s first touch phone. Having said that, Blackberry has retained a very similar user interface to its traditional blackberry and that makes transition from the old Blackberry to the new Storm relatively smooth.

2.  I’ll make references to iPhone for comparison since Storm is often compared to iPhone. It’s touch screen with tactile feedback (which I will touch on more at the next section) and has accelerometer capability. However, I feel that iPhone is easier to hold in my hands because it’s thinner and lighter. I went to check up the actual specifications to confirm my thoughts and the specs are as follows; Storm: 112.5mm (H) x 62.2mm (W) x 13.95mm (D) and iPhone 3G : 115.5 (H) x 62.1 (W) x 12.3mm (D). Storm weighs 155g and iPhone 133g.  

3. Storm has a slightly smaller screen than iPhone. Storm’s screen size of 3.2” is a little smaller than iPhone’s. However, it’s screen resolution is sharper.  On the other hand Storm’s screen has a slightly higher resolution than iPhone’s.

4. There is no doubt that Storm has a much more superior design than HTC G1. Storm retains Blackberry enterprise look. BUT a big minus to many Blackberry users is the lack of a trackball – which you don’t really need in a touch inteface as you can swipe your fingers across the screen. But I can bet with you if you speak to any die-hard blackberry users, they will tell you that the trackball (or scroll button) is what they love about Blackberry. Notwithstanding this, I believe that people who are going to take up Storm will not miss this feature too much. It takes time to adjust. Similar to G1 phone, you need to press the menu button (one of the four physical buttons at the bottom of the device) to gain access to the menu functions within the application. This is something I am not used to as I often just need to press the scroll button.

5. Storm makes up for what are lacking in iPhone. It has a removable battery (allowing a replacement of battery when the juice runs out), 1G internal memory but with microSD slot (technically can support up to 16G). Also, it’s battery seems to last longer than iPhone but charging Storm battery to full capacity seems to take much longer as compared to iPhone. While Storm has  longer battery life, it can’t last more than a day for me.

6. RIM has packed in a lot of entertainment features into Storm. While camera is not a traditional enterprise feature, it seems that most phones nowadays are equipped with camera. Storm is no exception. It has 3.2megapixals camera and has video and voice recording capabilities. Pictures taken can be uploaded to Flickr directly with a one click access on the menu.

7. I played MP3 on Storm. The sound quality emitted through the speakers is loud and clear and I do felt that its quality is slightly better than that of an iPhone although not significantly so. Clearly it loses out to Nokia 5800 XpressMusic but then again, Storm is not made to be a music phone. Video playback on Storm is smooth and video controls are easy to use. Storm also has its own media synch software that allows you to put your own iTunes music into Blackberry.

8. However, there are certain features that iPhone is one up against Storm. Storm’s built-in speakers are loud and clear but I have tried it out for audioconference, the microphone’s audio-pickup quality is not very good. Not sure if this is because mine is a test set. Most importantly, Storm does not have WiFi capability. I know that some of us may feel that WiFi is not necessary if you are on 3G. However, this is a real shortcoming to me because I tend to put my iPhone on secured corporate WiFi in office and home wifi when I’m back home. Reason being it’s a lot faster to pull down emails with big attachments and web surfing is a lot faster. Last but not least, you are not paying for the cellular data charge (of course, if you are on a corporate scheme, this may be less of a concern to you).


Phone OS & Applications

1. In terms of the phone OS features, Storm is certainly a clear winner. Storm has not just the basic SMS and Email, it also has MMS – a feature that’s greatly missed for iPhone users. It also provides more customisation features such as the font size, sensitivity level, etc. A power tool for enterprise users.  

2. Email set up with Blackberry is easy but I encountered some problem during set up and it frustrated me because I could not do anything but wait till the following day. What happened was that I was once a Blackberry user but I’ve stopped using Blackberry since Microsoft enabled Push capabilities in Windows Mobile phone (and now iPhone). My Blackberry account while still a valid account nonetheless requires an activation password. I set up my phone only after work, past 8pm. IT department supporting Blackberry Enterprise Service has closed. While the Blackberry customer support desk was extremely helpful, he could not do anything. This however would not be the case on Exchange email as I could set it up easily anytime, anywhere over the air.

3. If you are a heavy email user and receive hundreds of emails a day, you will appreciate Storm’s email search function. This is lacking in iPhone today. While I enjoy reading my email and attachment on an iPhone, it become  a real pain if I have to go through 200 emails to find a particular email and I can’t recall when the email was sent to me. iPhone only displays the emails in chronological order with the most recent email at the beginning.

4. In terms of reading email attachments, iPhone is still the best phone for this. iPhone is the only phone in the market that can open not just microsoft office documents, acrobat pdf files, iPhone can also open iwork documents. Something that a true Mac user would appreciate. In addition, the ability to pinch and zoom a document using the fingers makes reading easier. You can’t however download attachment and save it locally. This is where Storm has an advantage. It can download attachment and edit the documents with the application “Documents to Go” - but I seem to encounter error messages to say that I can’t download and save any attachment with file size greater than 3Mb although I can still open it.

5. The gripe I have is the lack of a trackball (as in the case of G1 phone) or magnifying glass (for iPhone). There is more hardwork involved just to place my cursor correctly at a particular part of a paragraph where I want to do my correction. What makes up for it is the cut and paste function which many people have bemoaned lacking in iPhone....imagine this. You type a long email. You realise that you just want to copy a particular section of the email and send it off in a separate email to another person. But you can’t do it. You have to retype. I hope Apple will include this and the email search capability into its next firmware upgrade if Apple is indeed serious about breaking into the enterprise market.

6. RIM touts its SurePress technology. This means you first touch the screen to highlight the selection that you want and then physically press on the screen to confirm the choice. The need to press (not touch) the screen to confirm my choice somehow makes it more difficult for me as I tend to press a wrong selection despite the fact that I’ve highlighted my intended selection correctly with a touch the screen. I’ve also tested this with a few other people who are first time users. This is a common occurrence. But rest assured that after a couple of days you will get used to it and this will be less of an issue

7. So far so good about Storm...until I start trying to compose a long email. As in all touch phones, the keypad is virtual. Compared to iPhone, I find that finger swiping on Storm is smooth but it is not as smooth as the that on an iPhone. On the other hand, the good thing about Storm is  that you can choose to compose using the virtual portrait keypad or the landscape full qwerty keypad. Today iPhone native mail application only presents a portrait Qwerty keypad although there is third party application that allows you to compose email in a landscape form.

8. If you prefer to type in portrait mode, you can use the SureType keypad which has auto-suggesting words features. You just need to tap the suggestion you want to use. However, I realised that often I tap on the wrong suggestion...but it may be just a matter of getting used to. I am definitely not a SureType master and I believe that with ample practice, you should be able to improve and type much faster and more efficiently. Of course, if you really think SureType isn’t your cup of tea, you can always use the Multi-Tap feature.

9. I prefer a full Qwerty keypad. While some may not like the fact that iPhone’s native full Qwerty keypad is only in portrait mode, I find typing still faster than if I use Storm’s full Qwerty keypad in landscape mode. When you touch a letter on iPhone’s keypad,  you will see the letter being ‘magnified’ and hence you will know whether you are pressing the right letter. In addition, iPhone’s auto-correction is good. In addition, iPhone can learn new words and will be able to recognise similar keystrokes the next time you try to type that word. It will also recognise the common keystroke errors that you frequently make and will present the word that you intend to type. When it comes to fast typing, I tend to press the wrong letters more often on RIM’s Storm as I don’t see the letter that I’m pressing except for a bluish light that emits from the position where my finger is placed on the screen. If you fingers are big, it may prove to be quite a challenge. For iPhone, the numbers are presented as the top most row of the keypad. This not the case for Storm. Numbers are embedded in the alphabet keys, and I have a higher chance of typing the wrong numbers. I have not used Storm long enough to made an assessment whether its learning capability equals that of iPhone.

10. Unlike iPhone, RIM’s Storm is a  “Clickable Screen”. That means when you type, you need to press down to simulate a “click”. It is as if Storm has virtual buttons underneath the screen. While some may like this feature, I find that I have “finger-ache” after long typing and it actually slows my speed in typing. While some say isnt this the same if you type on a physical keyboard, I can tell you that if you actually type on a physical keyboard, the strength required may actually be smaller because you only press on that key (not to mention that you definitely make fewer typing mistakes and hence fewer corrections needed). For Storm, you need to press on the whole screen.

8. There is no debate that Storm is able to do multi-tasking. That means you can open up an application while other applications remain running in the background. The same goes for G1 phone. Both Storm and G1 demonstrate good processing speed for multi-tasking. Windows Mobile phone usually will be more sluggish and iPhone can’t really perform this task well (it can allow you to listen to music while you check your emails or surf the net but it cannot open two applications say email and web browsing at the same time). What does this mean? It means you can let your Google Talk or MSN continuing running in the background while you clear your emails and if there is an instant message coming through, you can toggle to the application by pressing on the menu button for 3 seconds.

9. Blackberry allows tethering. Today you can’t do this on the iPhone unless it’s jailbroken. AT&T has recently announced that AT&T is working with Apple to make this available on Apple soon.

10. iPhone users can help themselves to a plethora of apps available at the Appstore. RIM is also going to have its own Blackberry Application Centre early next year – likely March 2009. At this moment, third party apps for Storm will be limited. Generally, RIM’s apps will target more for enterprise uses and given RIM’s traditional business arrangement is to work closely with the carriers, it is likely that carriers will play a more active role in supporting the Blackberry Application Centre. Indeed there is report that says that the application centre will allow user to retrieve applications hosted by carriers. If this is indeed true, then it’s certainly a different business model from that of iPhone where Apple plays a key role in deciding which apps to be put onto Appstore and it’s an open for all concept.

11. Blackberry browsers is not as user friendly as Safari on iPhone. Web browsing on iPhone Safari by far offers the best user experience. Blackberry browsers have a virtual buttons for you to zoom in and out of a web page but it’s not as intuitive as using your fingers to pinch and pan. Web page loading is also slightly slower on Storm.

12. Last but not least, I like the screen capture feature on iPhone. I use this feature when I want to email something interesting that I read in the email (without having to forward the whole email) or on the internet. I don’t think this is a key feature to most people, but it’s just something that I enjoy.


On the whole, Storm is certainly a strong match to iPhone if we compare the phone’s features. As a casual phone, Storm’s multimedia features are richer if we strictly compare the phone hardware and native software (what comes with the phone). However Apple’s Appstore made the difference. Appstore has many applications that make the whole iPhone experience more fun and personalised. If I’m a designer, I can download color palettes and photo editing applications over the air from Appstore onto my iPhone. I do not think Blackberry Application Centre will be able to match Apple Appstore, at least not in the short run.

IPhone’s form factor is definitely more attractive. What makes iPhone stand out from the crowd is not just the phone itself. The iTunes ecosystem creates the stickiness with consumers. Putting aside the applications, movies and videos, what is truly amazing about iTunes is the depth and breadth of the podcasts contents. If you have been using iTunes since the early days, you will realise the big leap that Apple has made over the years and this is not something that a competitor can easily catch up with.

I think Storm is a phone that RIM wishes to position as an All-In-One phone. However, I do feel that it somehows blurs the positioning of RIM. For serious business users, what they want is a phone that allows them easy access to emails and global address book. They do not need a phone that has many different functions but they do want a phone that can do emails for serious users. That means a phone with long battery life (although with 3G network, it’s hard to last Bold or Storm for more than a day) and has the ability to perform powerful email functions such as search, document editing and last but not least a phone that allows the user to type emails efficiently. That’s why after so many years, most of the Blackberry users still prefer a full physical Qwerty keyboard and is the preferred choice for business users. iPhone may have overtaken RIM in the total number of units sold (for now), but we have to remember that RIM has always been a phone for business users and not for consumers and if you compare like for like the number of iPhone enterprise users certainly pale in comparison to that of RIM’s. My take is that Storm is an attempt by RIM to attract the more casual users who also need to access emails regularly. There is less tendency for current heavy email Blackberry users to switch to Storm. Bold is likely a better choice for this group of users. There is no loss to RIM, however, as Storm expands its addressable market. The thing that RIM needs to be careful is not to lose its brand positioning amongst its group of professionals.

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