The Blackberry Storm 2 is delivering on some of the original Storm's expectations. It's a very powerful device with an inventive screen click. The Storm 9550 has mediocre web browser and underpowered camera. It's a tough decision, but I would have to say this is a do not buy on the list of Smartphones, especially with the plethora of choices in the market at the moment. I had a Storm 9530 previously and after 50% of the buttons fell off in the first month, I exchanged it for a less buggy phone. It's obvious that a first generation of a model should be buggy, but for the price, you might as well ante up the extra and go for the Droid or HTC.
The storm 2 feels sleeker and more polished. Its heavier then the HTC Imagio, and has no mobile TV tuner or kickstand. Touch keys on the top are a few of the only buttons on the unit. The storm 2 is mostly black, and has shortcut and volume buttons rubberized for texture and feel, for easy pressing. There is a brushed aluminum back panel that just feels durable and stylish.
VERIZON
The bottom front panel buttons are now built into the screen, and are touch sensitive. Going from an old storm to a new storm, typing was more fluent and with less errors, or mistypes of keys. Double taping zooms, but tends to be touchy and not natural and leaves artifacts on the screen that clear up once loaded the new screen.
The storm 2 is a world phone, with dual-band EV-DO and Quad-band EDGE, and single-band HSDPA, it will work here or overseas. Finally included in storm 2 is Wi-fi, which was not included in the previous storm. The storm 2's edge mounted speaker phone is very loud and clear. As stated above web-browsing is not the storm's high point. Also the storm 2 lacks, flash, two finger pinch zoom, and scrolling on web pages feel rough and bottom icons are finicky.
Messaging is very good on the Storm 2. It takes up to 10 email accounts, and pushes emails. Text messages are now threaded like an iPhone or Droid, and color coded in a he said she said, color coordination for you and recipient. As always RIM, preloads blackberry messenger, which is a tool in its own, but also puts links to download Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and AIM, and even Google Talk. This can entertain anyone's needs for chat.
A GPS radio works with VZ Navigator but at an extra cost of .99 per month extra cost, vs. the Droid's free turn by turn directions with Google maps. The Storm 2 includes 2GB of onboard memory and a 16GB SanDisk microSD card, that goes underneath the battery cover.
The Storm 2's camera is a 3.2MP but all you get is black without proper lighting, very dark on most pictures. Storm 2 has a proper 3.5mm headphone jack to plug-in headphones directly. Standalone video playing with amazing, but died on HD playback, but has support for 3GP and 4Gp which played fine. The large vibrant screen looked amazing and is running a slightly updated version OS 5.0 from previous version, on the same 528 MHz processor; you can also buy some third party applications, with over 2000 choices in the catalog. Photos support getagging with flickr, but shutter speed was over a second for photos, and video is just as dark without proper lighting.
In short if you're doubtful on the touch screen, or shrewdly updated model from its predecessor, I would go with the HTC Imagio or Motorola Android.
Blackberry Storm 2, 9550 Verizon
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