Well today at about 1:40pm my new Blackberry Storm arrived. I had to go to a meeting at 2pm but managed to go home grab the package and go to the meeting so I could have it for the afternoon. The phone does have a good look to it and is actually not as big as I had assumed it to be. Here are some pictures for comparison.

Sorry for the blurryness, I apparently need a few lessons in low light photography, but I think they will suffice.

So, now for the first few hours review. I will try to remember to re-review the Storm after having it for awhile as it seems like from what most people say you have to get used to the thing.

Comfort

It actually fits in my hands pretty well. I don’t have any complaints about that. Its a bit hard for my fat fingers to hit the correct keys sometimes and I did notice that at first I was pushing in the wrong places for some of the keys. It seems to me that the touch interface was about an 1/8″ off of where I thought I was pushing. Could just be my clumbsy big hands though.

Call Quality

I’ve only had one call so far so I can’t really tell you for sure how it is. The one call I had was choppy though, but I think that is because I was int he basement of ITC. My old phone however never cut out on me like that so hopefully that was just something weird going on.

Ease of Use

It took me about 15 minutes to find the browser on the thing. I found out that my data plan or something wasn’t activated yet and the browser icon was just missing from the home page and when my plan finally activated(I got an email or something about it) then the browser icon showed up. The next thing I had troubles figuring out at first was how to move things around on the home screen. I’d say its harder than moving them around on an ITouch but not by much. The only reason it is harder is because there are folders that have icons in them and you have to open the folder, select an icon, move it to the home folder and then you can move it around. Anything that you just want to move around in whatever folder you are in is really easy. As William would say, Drag and Drop.

Now, to the click screen touch interface. This is where most of the reviews I read kind of hammered the device saying that it was hard to use because you could not just slide your fingers around keyboard. They said this was hard because you had to click every time you wanted to type a letter, instead of how the iTouch/IPhone operates. I was affraid that this was going to drive me nuts, but so far I have actually liked it. I would have liked it if the click feathure didn’t require so much pressure to depress the screen, but its not that bad. If you have big fingers, I’d suggest probably not getting this device and going for the curve. 

I will admit though, the onscreen keyboard is probably just as easy to use as the iTouch/iPhone for me.

Google Apps

Not really a phone specific thing, but I’m going to talk about them for this phone. I’ll start by just listing the ones that I have installed currently.

• Gmail
• Maps(w/ Latitude)
• Talk
• Reader

So far I’ve only used Gmail and Latitude. Both of which work wonderful on the Storm. I’ve placed my Gmail app icon on the home row of icons in place of the Blackberry mail app. I can only imagine that pushing Gmail through the blackberry mail app has advantages, but I just don’t know what they are and this was an easy way to get my mail updates.

The Google Maps w/ Latitude is just amazing. Go here and you can see where I am if your on my friends list and then you can also share your location with me. On top of the social aspect of sharing your location GMaps allows you to find directions to anything based on your current location. I don’t know how many times I have been somewhere and thought, “How do I get to …?” This will definatly be a frequently used app for me.

I’m not exactly sure how GTalk is going to work out as I like the idea of having all my IM login’s in one app like how Pidgin or Adium work. I’m actually just installed GReader now, so can’t even review that.

So I guess for my first review I’ll give the device a 7.5 out of 10. I feel like I want to give it an 8.5, but really thats just the excitement of a new toy thats trying to give it that extra point.