Blackberry Storm VS iPhone

[Cortexian]

I'll make this as tl;dr as possible.

I want a new phone.

I want a touch screen.

I want media, GPS, email, internet browsing, etc (smartphone).

I like the Storm and iPhone fairly equally.

Please post pros/cons, opinions, statements, facts, or anything else that's thread related to help me decide.

[SnaFuBAR]

I tried both the iPhone and the Storm. The only thing the iPhone has over the Storm is image scaling. Everything was implemented far better on the Storm.

[ExAm]

I've heard that the storm sucks royally.

[TheGhost]

According to early reviews the Storm is apparently awful.

I have an iPhone and I am thoroughly pleased with it. I'm posting from it right now in fact.

[FluffyDucky™]

Holy shit breakthrough technology! Ghost uses "iModacity" :gonk:

[SnaFuBAR]

try it before you knock it, the thing kicks ass.

[FluffyDucky™]

I have an iPod touch, I loves it. :)

[Rob Oplawar]

I've played with my dad's iPhone, and the thing is pretty damn slick, but I've never seen any sort of blackberry in person so I can't compare them.

The key for me with these things is that neither of them looks anything like a phone, and I wouldn't be caught dead holding one up to my face. So, bluetooth support is a big issue for me- headsets ftw. Yes, I'm one of those guys you see using a headset, fooling people into thinking I'm not busy, and then motioning to my ear that I'm on the phone when someone tries to address me. Sue me.

[StankBacon]

my brother just got the storm, and it kicks ass.

[FRain]

It depends completely what you want to do with it. Personally I'd go with the iPhone, just because it can accidentally the whole AIDS, and it is pretty nice. Try before you buy, though.

[LinkandKvel]

Storm because after all at the end of the day they are phones, and Verizon gets much better reception than AT&T. Also Storm has a faster 3G network.

[dg]

Storm because after all at the end of the day they are phones, and Verizon gets much better reception than AT&T. Also Storm has a faster 3G network.

http://www.google.com/search?q=usa+fastest+3g+network&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I would go with the iPhone. It's simple, easy, and very well supported. I'm getting a Blackberry Bold, so I don't have any bias either.

[Masterz1337]

iPhone, I've used both, and the iPhone just simply feels easier to use and less complicated, even though it can do a hell of a lot more with the appstore and the jailbreak.

[LinkandKvel]

http://www.google.com/search?q=usa+fastest+3g+network&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I would go with the iPhone. It's simple, easy, and very well supported. I'm getting a Blackberry Bold, so I don't have any bias either.
It's just for promotional purposes. Don't believe me, test them.

[dg]

It's just for promotional purposes. Don't believe me, test them.

I'll leave the testing to the experts. (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Mobile+and+Wireless&articleId=9083559&taxonomyId=15&pageNumber=1)

http://www.goingcellular.com/images/blogpics/3gresults.jpg


Also, just for the record, I have Sprint. Not to mention 3G isn't even activated in Omaha yet. I would still have to pick the iPhone.

[Heathen]

Iphone

[FRain]

Verizon has the best coverage area out here. But AT&T is faster but has less coverage area.

[Cortexian]

Well I'm in Canada, so if I get an iPhone it's going to be on Rodgers. If I get a Storm it's going to be on Telus... I've yet to try a Storm myself, but I've had my hands on an iPhone for 4 days straight before so I know how it feels. I'm waiting to actually try out a Storm before I make a decision though, I need to know if the "SureClick" screen is right for me.

[Matooba]

Well ive had both and I bought two new Storms. One of then had issues with the keyboard and 2 letters being setup wrong. You would hit (a) and get (y) & vise versa. The Iphone could connect to wifi hotspots and the Storm does not. It relys on the verizon network only. Also, there is real crappy support for ringtones, games, and applications. There is one site carrying 3rd party apps called Crackberry.com but I would like to download apps that are sure to work properly. The instant messenger froze a few times but resumed after about 3 minutes. When you record a video with the camcorder built in, the media center,built into the phone, will not play it, for it is a wrong format (3gp). They should have made it support it right o.O. Music is easily move to it from your computer. It uses Windows Media Player Like Iphone uses Itunes. Video however is another process. You can convert video using Super (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html) video converter to the 3gp format but you loose quality. In closing, the Blackberry Storm is new and it will be a little while before a device update and new perks are available for it.


Further bugs can be read by visiting this link: http://www.slashgear.com/verizon-prepping-two-blackberry-storm-updates-for-imminent-release-2624343/

Ok, so here it is in a nut shell.

Just recently, the Apple iPhone became the top selling handset in U.S (http://www.cnbc.com/id/27646992?sr=hotnews). It overtook the iconic Motorola Razr, which has held title for the past 3 years (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/11/the-iphone-beco.html?sr=hotnews). It’s been almost 2 years ago since Steve jobs announced the iPhone in his Macworld 2007 keynote (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf07/). More than 11 million iPhones have been sold worldwide since and there seems no sign of its popularity slowing down.

Many so-called “iPhone killers”, including the Samsung Instinct, BlackBerry Bold, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Google G1 have been released since the iPhone’s debut, but none have won the mind and heart of the consumer like the iPhone has. In fact, even if we combined the number of these “iPhone killers” sold, it’s still way short of total iPhone’s sold. So what is still attributing to Apple’s success besides the Apple logo? Why can’t the BlackBerry Storm eclipse it?

From a design perspective, the iPhone wins not just in its simple, straight forward face but also in its dimensions. The iPhone 3G is thinner and even more tapered at the sides compared to its predecessor. Not only is it slimmer by over 20%, but it is also narrower than the BlackBerry Bold, making it easier to hold as a phone. Compared to the new HTC Google G1, the iPhone’s shorter, even thinner and weighs much less. Of the competition, only the HTC Touch Diamond and Samsung Instinct have similar pocketable dimensions. For the HTC Touch Diamond, the smaller dimension also comes at a cost, with only 2.8 inches screen - much smaller versus the spacious 3.5 inches one on the iPhone.

Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research In Motion, said the BlackBerry Storm has been in development for a number of years. However, even with 6 extra months, launching later than the iPhone 3G, Research in Motion still hasn’t been able to develop a a device as pocketable as the iPhone 3G. In fact, Research In Motion’s latest offering is still thicker by 7 millimeters and weighs 22 grams more.
Personal style preferences aside, it is hard to ignore Apple’s philosophy for simple, sleek designs. The dominant widescreen multi-touch display with a single hardware button (for taking you back to the home screen), as styled by Jonathan Ive, ignited a revolution among manufacturers to rethink their handset designs. Ever since the original iPhone announcement, many manufacturers including Samsung have launched touch-screen phones with much less buttons on the front instead of a whole plethora of them.
http://admiralh.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/blackberry_1118160a.jpg?w=300&h=205 One of first few things most people will notice on an iPhone, is the bright, vivid glass touch-screen. At first glance, the BlackBerry Storm is no slouch with a bright touch-screen of its own, with 480 by 360 pixels. Unfortunately, screen resolution isn’t the only thing that matters on a screen. The BlackBerry Storm is only capable of displaying up to 65,536 colors, much short of the iPhone’s 262,144 colors. This might sound unimportant initially, but you’ll notice a stark difference in contrast of colors and their gradient when browsing the web (like ESPN sports photos, CNN, BBC) and the high quality photos or videos imported from your PC.

Speaking of browsing, the iPhone Safari browser has no doubt revolutionize how we view the web on the go, with its silky multi-touch navigation. While the BlackBerry Storm has improved upon the BlackBerry Bold in terms of navigation, it still suffers in rendering and display speed. It’s better than the BlackBerry Bold, but still not in the same league as the iPhone. A lot of the times, you’ll see “loading script” as the BlackBerry Storm tries to chug its way through Javascript painfully. Perhaps a little too often, the BlackBerry Storm seems incapable of rendering web pages exactly like on a PC monitor. Had Research In Motion used WebKit (http://webkit.org/) to power their browser instead of using their own in-house rendering system, these issues might have been solved. Also note that BlackBerry browser by default, only downloads medium compressed quality images into its browser. The iPhone on the other hand, downloads full undown-sampled images directly. What you see is really what you get. The BlackBerry Storm has no advance tabbed browsing like on the iPhone. There’s also noticeable font smoothing, for easier viewing, on the iPhone Safari browser as well.
Sure Steve Jobs might have exaggerated when he said the iPhone is at least 5 years ahead of any other phone, but the iPhone Safari browser, even at its original 1.0.1 software state, was definitely 2 years ahead of its competition (now).
Rendering problems on the BlackBerry Storm extend beyond the browser into the e-mail messages too. In short, the so-called HTML e-mail on BlackBerry Storm looks half-baked, when compared to the full HTML version on the iPhone. The problem comes from the fact that Research In Motion strips all background, fonts, tables, spacing… etc. and then pulls what’s left of your message together in a single column view. BlackBerry Storm also requires you to go through the menu and click “get images” before you can see any image right in your messages. This applies to any e-mail you receive from a recipient whom you might not done “get image” before. A real hassle if you ask me.

For businesses, both BlackBerry Storm and iPhone can synchronize with Microsoft Exchange Server. But for consumers, Research In Motion offers no mean to update your contact and calendar wirelessly. You can argue that this is not a vital thing for average Joe’s, but having a wireless synchronization solution makes updating personal data simple. For the BlackBerry Storm, a possible solution to this is Google Sync (http://www.google.com/mobile/blackberry/sync.html). But not everybody uses Google Calendars or Gmail for contacts. Worst, Google Sync also suffers issues of its own. One of the biggest issues is that Google Sync transfers all the “suggested contacts”, even when you’ve set it to not add into your personal contact list. Yes, those unwanted contacts you’ve accquired from Ebay, Craigstlist… etc. will still show up on your BlackBerry Storm, whether you like it or not, thanks to Google Sync. Google Sync features are fairly limited and its reliability is very questionable. Apple hit some serious road bumps when it launched MobileMe (http://www.apple.com/mobileme/). It’s been almost 6 months since and Apple has improved the reliability a great deal. With MobileMe and iPhone set up, it’s easy to update your address book and calendar wirelessly. MobileMe brings push e-mail, so any new e-mails will show on your iPhone instantly.
http://admiralh.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/apple_iphone_3g3.jpg?w=251&h=300 Since both handsets are touted as all-in-one devices, media capabilities are very important.
The BlackBerry Storm adds a slightly updated look to the BlackBerry media player from BlackBerry Bold, but feature wise - it’s the same. The interface for navigating around your music, videos and photos is very basic. Better than all previous BlackBerry’s, but still only got mediocre media functions and basic media management. For example, it takes a whole series of button presses just to set your playlist to repeat. If you want to set your own playlist on the go, it literally becomes a nightmare. There is no way to sort by podcasts, composer, audiobooks, compilations. There’s no cover flow or song rating system either.

The iPhone 3G boasts a storage of either 8GB or 16GB, while the BlackBerry Storm only has 1GB built in. Sure the iPhone does not have a removable memory slot, but how often are you going to fiddle around with the MicroSD cards, when you’ve got 8GB or 16GB on board already? Also note the largest MicroSD card is 8GB, as of this date of writing.

For consumers, getting all the data onto your BlackBerry Storm, requires Microsoft Outlook Express, BlackBerry Desktop Manager, Roxio Mobile Media Manager, iTunes and BlackBerry Media Sync (http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/features/media/mediasync.jsp). You need all of them if you want to get your calendar, contacts, photos, music and videos onto your device. On the iPhone, iTunes easily handles everything once Outlook has been set up. On a Mac, it’s even simpler. Key is - manufacturers have to realize that seamless integration between the desktop and the iPhone is an important part of Apple’s winning formula. There’s a user experience beyond the phone to consider too.

There’s no Wi-Fi on the BlackBerry Storm. So if you want to use surf the web (or download) at faster than 3G speed, at home or at your local coffee shop, that’s not possible. Verizon deliberately removed the Wi-Fi, so that you would have to use their mandatory monthly data plan, with minimum of $30 add on to your existing voice plan. Verizon’s explanation was - you don’t need Wi-Fi when you’ve got a good wireless network. Most users including myself disagree. Wi-Fi hotspots are so common these days. In fact, many of them are free. So, it’s easy to use them to save yourself from those nasty wireless data overage charges, yet surf the web at faster speed. With the iPhone, it is possible access your e-mail inbox and browse the internet, even if you don’t get the data plan from AT&T, simply through Wi-Fi.

One of the subtle things I noticed on the BlackBerry Storm was the lag in the software. From simple things like rotating the screen to more intensive activities like scroll through a complex webpage like full PC version of ESPN, Amazon or New York Times front page. Not smooth at all. To tackle some of the slowness, Research In Motion decided to add transitions like fades and side swipes to hide them. But the lack of graphics acceleration in the BlackBerry Storm for use with these animations only seemed to add to the problem. In fact, the lags are even more apparent when you put the BlackBerry Bold next to it. Part of this might have been due to memory leaks and rushed software release, but either way the developers at Research In Motion should have tweaked the BlackBerry Storm better before the release. Especially if they are trying to launch an iPhone killer. If you want to multi-task (especially with a complex webpage like New York Times, Amazon, ESPN… etc. running in the background), you better get use to seeing the spinning hour clock icon.
http://admiralh.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/blackberry_2_430.jpg?w=344&h=237User interface wise, the BlackBerry Storm has come a long way. It’s much more modern looking and some of the things like setting the BlackBerry Storm as an alarm clock, are no longer a chore. It is without a doubt, not as fancy as the iPhone interface, but improved upon the BlackBerry Bold’s 4.6 operating system. You can tell the folks at Research In Motion spent a little time to make it nicer than the BlackBerry Bold operating system. Not enough though. The whole user interface isn’t unified at all. What you see is merely a skin. Once you dig a little deeper, you basically revert back to the old BlackBerry menu navigational system, scrolling through a list of text options… etc..

The main feature of BlackBerry Storm is the SurePress clickable touch-screen keyboard. You can choose either SureType (2 letters per key) in portrait mode or full size in landscape mode. The idea behind SurePress was to combine the best of both worlds - touch-screen’s ease to change according to the application user interface and hardware button feel. It’s cool, especially when pressing through bigger buttons, like dialing the phone keypad. Typing on the full QWERTY keyboard is a whole different story though. SureType is actually a hindrance, if you ask me. The BlackBerry Storm doesn’t use an advance dictionary to predict and smartly auto correct word-by-word what you just typed instantly, so it really slows everything down. Typing each letter is essentially an exhausting 4 steps process because of SurePress. First you target the letter. Then, you touch the screen. Third, you have make sure the screen “clicks” and the highlighted selection is still the same then, so that it acknowledges your key press correctly. Lastly, you look again to make sure what you typed was really correct. Laborious, isn’t it? On the iPhone, all you have to do is touch the letters at their approximate location, at the bottom of the screen and the dictionary would do most of the hard work. In fact, typing on the BlackBerry Storm is way slower than what you would expect, compared to iPhone, let alone comparing against a real keyboard like BlackBerry Bold. *Note - I can type fairly fast on both iPhone and BlackBerry Bold. On the iPhone, I tend to rely on the dictionary for help. While on the BlackBerry Bold, I rely on “feeling” the keys. On both, I can almost type short messages without even looking at the keyboard.

So where does that leave us? Well, if you absolutely want the best all-in-one device on the market right now, get the iPhone 3G. It’s got the best web browsing, media (photo/music/video & YouTube) experience and their e-mail solution is solid. If you want the best BlackBerry possible, pass on both BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Storm and wait for the next one. Both are relatively raw as of this moment. It’s better to wait for the next revision when Research In Motion’s devoted more time into polishing their software. Don’t get me wrong, Research In Motion has done the best job so far of coming up with a true iPhone contender. But it’s definitely no iPhone killer, until they’ve addressed all the mentioned issues.


Source: http://admiralh.wordpress.com

[FRain]

It's just for promotional purposes. Don't believe me, test them.

Apple & Friends has already been confronted for this issue. If you really believe that its EXACTLY TWIES AZZ FAST! then you're stupid. Are you Anti-Apple?

Anyways, I was given the permission to mess around with the blackberry Storm recently and it looks nice, but the touch-screen had terrible responsiveness (whatever). The click, and then use the icon for some reason just bothered me. I'd used the Voyager before and it had a decent touch screen and I could navigate around pretty swiftly, but it was very laggy. I bet the iPhone's would be better.

[Cortexian]

Yea, had some Telus reps come in with some working demos (we have the fake demos that don't actuall work, just for "display")... So I finally got to play with one, I played with it for about 30 minutes and never had any issues with the responsiveness of the touch-screen or the OS. Everything seemed to move fluid and natural, just like the iPhone feeling, perhaps this Storm was updated with some kind of new firmware to improve performance issues. However, I've read that Blackberry is fairly "on-the-ball" when it comes to updates and such, and there have already been multiple updates released.

I've asked for a Blackberry Storm, because as much as I hate getting new things off the get-go, I would rather not support Apple. Yes, I'm one of those guys. Plus, cancellation charges to switch providers would cost lots of money, where-as reactivating my plan costs nothing...

[Cortexian]

Got my Storm today, loving it a lot more than the iPhone that I played with for 3 days. It's fast as fuck and super fun to play with, the navigation is really simple, and typing is blazing fast (I can type faster on this already than I could on the iPhone, without making mistakes that is).