Now that I've spent some time with it...

I’ve had a week to play around with my new BlackBerry Storm. Thankfully, the phone has not been the nightmare that many reviewers have indicated it was. So let me tell you what I have experienced.

Lagging/Freezing. Yes. This phone lags but the switching back and forth from landscape to portrait is only a moment and I have easily gotten used it. Where it lags the most is in the camera function. Taking pictures and reviewing them is touchy. Freezing has occurred only one time while switch between applications. A correction using the end button resolved it.

Random reboots. I had one the day after I got the phone and as far as I have noticed, I have not had one since. Zac’s boyfriend, Drew, suggested that I pull the battery for a hard reboot. Maybe if these happened more often, I wouldn’t need to? I have done a couple battery pulls and have not noticed any effect but looking at other BlackBerry users, it appears to be a common thing to do.

Inaccurate touch screen. I sort of agree with it and sorta don’t. I think that RIM somehow has anticipated where touch is coming from. I don’t know why it works this way but my screen on the left side perfectly accurate when using my left thumb and same with the right side when using the right thumb. When I reach across the screen, it doesn’t seem to be accurate all. I would also say that the sensitivity is lower than I would like and it is not very good at sensing what you are trying to touch if the touch area to be activated is small—for example, a web link in the browser.

POS OS. Agreed. The OS does need to be overhauled as it is definitely not built with touch interaction in mind. My biggest complaint about this phone is the myriad of navigational and menu steps I have to do what I want it to do. The application switcher seems like a good idea, but this phone gets noticeably bogged down when there are many applications opened so I keep that to a minimum.

No Wi-fi. While I would agree that the decision to not include wi-fi was boneheaded, I don’t find that I miss it since I couldn’t use it at work anyways (network is not open) and when I’m home… well… I have a computer. Reception is pretty decent wherever I travel and I think I can live without the internet for a little while if I go someplace that where I don’t get coverage.

You push on it? The gap does bother me and I am not entirely convinced on its build quality in that respect which is a reason why I’m going to put insurance on it because I’ll be pissed if I had to pay full price on it if I had to replace it. That said, I get used to the push-in screen although it is sometimes tricky to know when you need to push and when you don’t.

Poor Battery Life. With my calling habits and developing data habits, I will drain the battery in a day if I have GPS on. With GPS off, I will get two days barely. Not horrible but not good either.

It’s not the greatest phone I’ll admit, but it is functional and performs well in all the areas that I need it to. The messaging aspect of it is phenomenal and I don’t think I can ever go back to the old way of accessing email on my previous phone. I would recommend this phone only for people who do a lot of email messaging and web browsing. For multimedia and third party aps, you still want to head to the iPhone. The Storm just doesn’t compare on that front.