BlackBerry Storm 2: the official unofficial hands-on
By Sean Cooper 
posted May 21st 2009 1:00PM
posted May 21st 2009 1:00PM
We've been bumping into the new BlackBerry Storm 2 for quite a while now on the so-called "information superhighway," but we've finally had a chance to escalate those encounters and spend a few sweet moments with a live unit in the flesh. First off, let's confirm the huge news: RIM's abandoned the original Storm's SurePress click-screen and gone with a traditional fixed capacitive display for the sequel. It's over, guys. Unfortunately, the Verizon-branded dual-mode GSM / CDMA unit that we played with has a bug preventing us from getting past the license screen, so we couldn't dive deep into the OS, but we can tell you what we do know: the Storm 2's sleeker style and more heft combined with the newly-stable screen collaborate to make everything feel a wee bit higher end than the original. Follow the break for more impressions!
Update: On the advice of our legal team, we've had to pull the images and videos originally seen in this post. Sorry, everyone!
Update: On the advice of our legal team, we've had to pull the images and videos originally seen in this post. Sorry, everyone!
We'd heard buzz of haptic support -- and while it is possible it is somewhere in there, we can't get at it, so we'll leave that one up in the air for now. We'll leave the device with the heroes and hope we get another chance with it if they can get into the OS for a tour. Meanwhile, follow on for the gallery and a quick video showing off some Verizon branding right after the break. Of course, if you have any questions, drop them in the post and we'll do our level best to get you an answer -- or at least try to lie in a convincing fashion.
SWEEETTT!!!!
SWEEETTT!!!! ....wait, which one is the new one again??
Agreed, which one is which?
Again, another failed attempt to beat the iphone... everyone just needs to give up and give praise to the alighty Steve Jobs who gave us his only phone so that we may be saved
This is good news. RIM listened to the community and adjusted there design. I have a lot of friends that like the first storm, but suggested a regular touch screen (not the click screen) would be better.
Capacitive adds a nice touch for quick response.
Unfortunately on AT&T it will only be a EDGE device. Woudl've been nice to have an alternative to the iphone on AT&T.
Notice the scroll down arrow at the bottom of the EULA prompt? Have you tried scrolling down then pressing ok?
NM :P
When can we have GnuPhone ??
I agree. GNU Phone time!!!
WI-FI???
@TheSuburbanWhiteBoy
Thank you for your scintillating input, but I think I'll take MMS, background processes, and the myriad of other features cell phones have had for years that the STILL iPhone lacks despite being in it's second hardware revision and second major OS build.
In other news, I think RIM should be commended for their conscious effort in listening to their consumers and improving their device accordingly. Personally I like my Storm; I run a shrunk down beta OS, and while I DON'T believe that should be the standard, I don't mind it personally. I like the phone and eagerly await the new one.
In short, as Abhishek said, SWEEETTT!!!!
*******************Mark my words, SurePress is not gone- the o.k. button can't be pressed because the early model that Engadget received doesn't have the full hardware below the screen yet- Notice the lining of the screen from the old storm compared to the current one- they are the same. I currently have a dare and the screen is sealed around the device... Just throwing it out there, just wait and see - RIM received an award for the type of technology they patented.
also... http://www.engadget.com/photos/blackberry-storm-2-the-official-unofficial-hands-on-1/2027796/ look at this photo and you'll notice that one of the buttons behind the disclaimer is highlighted- how can it be highlighted if its not being touched - because on the old storm you touch to highlight, then push to chose the right button, so if it's a normal screen wouldn't it highlight just to select it? anyone else notice this???
also If you want to comment on this- I posted this again at the end of the comments
RIM thought it could outdo the iPhone with tactile feedback on the virtual keyboard. Nice try, nice fail. They had to end up copying the iPhone after all. I give RIM credit for trying to improve on the iPhone and they've got megabucks for experimentation. They can design about 12 different handsets to Apple's one. RIM must have quite a design team. I'm waiting to see RIM's first tablet to counter the Apple iPad. Guaranteed, RIM will try and stick chicklet keys on it and the big corporations will probably love that idea.
I can't wait to see what RIM is going to counter the next iPhone with. They'll likely step up all their hardware another notch within a couple of months after Apple releases the iPhone.
Call me crazy, but I'm more excited about this phone than I am the new iPhone & Pre. Despite it's history, its still on Verizon, which neither the Pre or iPhone can say about themselves. It's kind of like buying a new piece of hardware w/ a crap OS. What's the point?
Sprint = worst customer service in the planet. you're lucky they don't deck you just for calling.
ATT = worst service
Tmobile = worst insurance
the midget
wow, capacitive sucks. I don't know how such an awful, non-customer friendly interface is gaining acceptance. There's nothing user-friendly about capacitive screens.
do it!!
skyblaze wants it now.
who? is talking in third person. who? should stop now, before people think who? is mentally unstable. who? out.
Ray thinks this phone was also rushed
and skyblaze thinks who? needs to stop sippin' on the haterade just cuz hes badass enough to talk how he wants and be the furthest thing from mentally unstable who?'ll ever meet.
Talk's big on the internet, Skyblaze
CARP!! now i have to decide between tour and storm 2!!!!! what to doooo what to doooooo
@WC
if you're tryna make a personal visit to the 19120 to see skyblaze in the flesh thats fine by me. just dont pull any gay shizzle cuz ill have you in your grave faster than you can say snootchie bootchies, ya digg
or just wait till the next reader meetup if its anywhere close by :)
No, who is right, anyone who talks in 3rd person is either mentally challenged or a huge jerk.
or they just feel like it. i dont see what the big deal is. though personally id rather not do it myself it doesnt bother/annoy me at all. its not like hes speaking another language or yelling idiocies like "first!" or some troll-like apple obsessed. and if you check his history he doesn't even do it with every single comment anyway. seriously, some people need to grow up and stop looking for inane reasons to insult someone.
George is getting angry!
I have no qualms with third person references. However, anyone who proclaims himself "badass" and "the furthest thing from mentally unstable" needs to do a reassessment of his life.
meh. didn't mean to sound cocky. i know i'm nowhere near perfect. i just like to head my head up and let people know im not about to let 'em bring me down. especially over something as petty as me talking in third person sometimes. all about the confidence and anti-defeatism, ya digg :)
*KEEP my head up -_-'
"more heft" !?! are you kidding, the first one was hefty enough!
Engadget stole the phone! More at 11
where is the speaker
this is getting out of hand...
here's to hoping The Big Red V will offer some incentive for us less-than-a-year-old Storm owners...
Agreed! I bought my Storm on May 2nd! I still can't see what people bitch about when it comes to the Storm. Memory leak? Quickpull app! Set that to run at any point during the day or do it manually! Hate the OS? I'm runnin' an absolutly AMAZING 5.0/,141 OS hybrid that I found on Crackberry.com. Add a 16GB micro SD card to the mix for my music and you have a phone that rivals if not surpasses the fruit phone that iAM SO SICK OF HEARING ABOUT.
Seriously, I will be super pissed off if they release this thing as soon as it seems they will. They better offer us Storm 1 owners SOMETHING.
Why do some early adopters think they should be subsidized when a new model comes out? It's not like if you buy a new car your dealership will offer you a deep discount when next years model comes out. Get over it.
@ RyanTV
I'm pretty sure that when the iPhone's early adopters complained about the price cut, they were rewarded. People have a right to be angry when they support a company and then they get stabbed in the back in return. By taking action, there's always hope that they will be compensated. Of course, RIM and Verizon might choose not to do anything, but you never know unless you ask.
@ryanTV it's different when your car doesn't fucking work right
@Brian:
you prove the point of every Apple lover out there. The complaints about the iPhone stem from it's limitations, and some of those limitations are hardware, some are software. iPhoners say "i can just jailbreak to get X functionality (tethering, backgrounding, etc...) then you turn around and say "Blackberry is the greatest! All I need to do is put in a new OS, add more memory, and manually kill apps to prevent memory overruns!!" This doesn't sound like fun to me...
And while I'm BB Bashing, can we discuss last week's story about the Blackberry Bold outselling the iPhone in Q1 2009??? There are 5 different models of the Bold on a dozen carriers, according to the BB site. So, it took 60 phones to outsell the iPhone. Not saying sales is a measure of quality, I'm just putting the sales numbers in perspective. In a related story, 60 of my dads can beat up your dad.
@jimmy
Wha??
Please point me to these mystical carriers who carry 5 versions of the Bold on their network.
On the other hand, you DO realize that the iPhone, with it's 2 very real versions of the same phone are on carriers all around the world also right?
Does the Storm 2 have the same size screen as the original storm or is it a little larger?
I read "same size screen" as some ice cream. Time to head to Cold Stone I guess!
I want this storm. I held out on the original because of the surepress screen.
It's better that they admit the mistake and cut bait rather than try and force it like most companies do.
That's why RIM is better, they learn from their mistakes where most others don't.
Have You Tried To Drag To The Bottom Of The Agreement..
Sometimes The Buttons Are Not Enabled Till It Thinks You Actually Read It
Have You Tried Not Capitalizing Every Word Like Its The Beginning Of The Sentence?
I was thinking the exact same thing, but I figure they aren't that dumb. It probably requires authentication form a server to be used.
Course, but thanks for the suggestion! Sadly the "OK" button turns blue when pressed, but that's it.
try mashing the screen in till it clicks. probably just have to get past the first click... :)
Good idea. Too bad it didn't work. Do Blackberries usually take that long to start up? I've never actually used one.
I think it has to do with the OS and the screen's selection mechanism. Maybe the OS isn't registering the selection because the screen is different from SurePress?
I hope Verizon gives early adopters some love with discounts at the very least.
Pathetic. Does everyone remember this: "RIM’s SurePress wins “Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough” award during the Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona.
Rim makes fun of the iPhone touting their SurePress technology. Within a year, they turn around and admits to their own by copying Apple in the end. They must have studied the Microsoft "me too" manual on how to kinda/sorta/innovate techniques.
Will you just shut up.
Nothing you post ever strays from that pathetic script of yours.
@Look_Around_You
Why? What RIM has done justifies my statement.
RIM’s SurePress wins “Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough” award during the Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona.
Instead of building on this so called technological breakthrough, that was touted to beat the iPhones multi-touch interface, RIM turns around and does a Microsoft "me too" move.
The proof is right here on Engadget. The report is that SurePress, the technological breakthrough feature" is no longer there. Instead, RIM does a "me too" move like Microsoft and copies the iPhone.
Well yeah, SurePress was a stupid idea, and RIM looks sorta dumb for touting it and saying it's way better than a plan capacitive touchscreen...
... but I don't get how you concluded that now they're "copying Apple".
They were just wrong, full stop.
They copy Apple? So their products will catch fire too? Hope not. Apple probably have a patent on that.
So, Apple invented the touchscreen phone? Wow, I thought for sure there was one before the iPhone.
Jubei has a point. RIMfail on that sure-press crap.
They could have made it better--IE more 'button's under the screen, so it kept a similar sensitivity across the surface of the screen. They could have made it optional as well.
Seems that a software update for the original Storm is all that is all that is needed.
Why is he low ranked? I have to agree with Jubei. All these companies begin to release touchscreen phones since the inception of the iPhone. So far, their attempts have been laughable since Apple only sells two iPhone designs so far and none of these companies were able to beat Apple.
Because others don't agree... As a matter of fact, roughly 99.99% of people never, EVER agree with Jubei. Why? Because he's a blind Apple fanboy, who does nothing other than troll on a daily basis. His posts bring me amusement, well, they used to at least. Before he got stuck on the same script every post.
I'll just go ahead and quote his last 5 posts"
"me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too."
"me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too me too."
"me too me too me too me too me too..."
Well, you get the picture. He doesn't look into anything before he posts, and if it has a touch screen, or similar capability, it is a direct knockoff/copy of Apple. For example, the Microsoft Surface, and it's projector technology, with it's ability to recognize objects placed on it, is a direct copy of the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch, because when you touch it, it does something similar to what a touchscreen would do, because according to him, Apple invented the touchscreen, the touchscreen phone, and the Microsoft Surface. Except it wasn't called that, and has never been announced...
So they're getting rid of that click screen in V2 but are still advertising it in V1 like it's the best thing about the phone?
PS : Pet peeve. What's with the "world's first touchscreen blackberry"? There's only one BB maker anyway.
Yeah, I've always been amused by that. Or when a company sets up a comparison chart versus another company's products, and lists 27 random narrowly-defined "features" that only they have just so that they can make it look like the competitor's product is crap.
I don't like it, at all.
I also think the physical keys of the first one was a lot better. Why would they change that?
Did some other ninja who prevents good ninjas from getting these phones try to stop him because the back of that storm looks like someone was running it over with a car. the back of door isnt even flat and their is white scuff marks all over that thing.
thank you good ninja for the battle you encountered to get this storm 2 to engadget
I remember the first Storm commercial where they introduced the click-screen and said it "feels so... right!"
Alas, feeling so right doesn't make it to the second generation.
Storm 2: It feels so wrong! (TM)
You'll hate it at first, but then it'll feel good and you won't be able to get enough of it. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing... anal sex! I mean... the storm 2!
@phoenix, its all about the lube... i mean storm2
Rumor is it will have some sort of pressure sensitive touch to it, so you will still be able to hover over a key, then press a little harder to "hit" that key. Without that, you pretty much have to change how the BB OS works.
@Phoenix: You made me spit out valuable beer! But so worth it.
Not to mention you're right ;)
*cleans beer off monitor*
The OS is still the most interesting part, which sucked so much ass in the predecessor. I hope RIM has made it more responsive, intuitive and usable.
Man...do I get the Tour 9630 or the Storm 2 (We'll say the 9570?)
still takes an hour and a half to boot. ugh, comon RIM.
You do realize that it is loading an entire operating system on limited RAM, right? It appeared to take nearly 2 minutes to boot-up. Yes, I agree that its slow, but I also realise why.
And, as much as I hate to make this comparison, my friends iPhone seems to take just as long to load... its just as annoying.
Well perhaps if they can stop the software from making it crash and reboot 6-7 times a day i'll turn a blind eye to the slow boot time. I'm just saying, lets hope they fixed more than just the screen.
Coming in July: the Blackberry Do-Over! Only from Verizon Wireless.
Try scrolling down in the EULA. That may enable the "OK" button.
(just saw that corey advised that, as well. Maybe since I didn't cap each word, you'll try it?)
Yessir.. We did indeed.
With no click screen - how to navigate? What's the equivalent to pushing the track ball?
It's going to take some major OS work to not have a click screen.
This will be interesting .
mm, the click screen wasn't the problem, the glitchy PoS firmware was the problem.
I never said it was problem. But they changed it.
Raising a new question regarding the Storm's navigation. How do you navigate the BB OS without surepress or trackball.
Lol, over a minute and a half to boot up - really? Wow. I am impressed! Why would you take a video of that anyways? Looks like they took everything from the storm 1 but just changed the screen on the storm 2 and added wifi. Cool, I guess.
Cheap. Talk's CHEAP.
Goddamnit.
LOL, I think the EULA is expecting a SurePress click.
If this OS is anything like the last one, no thanks. Still running .76, not gonna mess with leaked FWs.
Don't get me wrong, this is a great phone, does everything I want in a phone, its just painful to do it.
4.7.0.122, 4.7.0.141 have both been "officially" released by Bell, Telus, and Vodafone. Just because Verizon won't get off their asses and update your phone doesn't mean you should suffer because of it. Seriously, upgrade to .122 and your phone will be like new again.
I've used .75, .122, .141, down to .132, and recently upgraded to .148. So far, so good; I can say that everything is just that much more responsive than before, and .122 had already made significant improvements over .75. E.g., the camera now autofocuses in ~1 sec (taking the picture takes another second), the accelerometer is quicker, loading pictures is faster, etc. Memory mgmt seems to be better (start out with ~42MB, end up with ~30MB w/ constant use). I can't comment on battery life yet. Typing still lags a bit, so overall, I'd give it a B.
WiFi?
Ok, so it seems based on the video that this Storm is not running OS 5.0 either. I sure hope they get 4.7 or 5.0 right by launch date. I don't think it was surepress alone that was the downfall of the Storm 1.
The thing that really concerns me is that they changed the green phone key orientation so it points up now on Storm 2. Something big going on...
I agree with gtravara - I want to know if there's wifi onboard. That alone will determine whether I stay with VZW to get this or jump to AT&T for the JesusPhone 3.0
The timing of this whole thing is so suspicious. I wonder if this is a lame ploy to keep verizon users from jumping ship after the pre/iphone launches--then they will delay-delay-delay as they try to work out the bugs in this thing. I know 4 people who returned the storm..it has a bad rep among people who would buy smartphones..they better do this one right.
Best conspiracy theory I've heard all day.
Wait, did you just complain that they will delay while they work the bugs out, but then turn around and say they better get this phone right? Do you want them to take the time to create a decent phone, or not?
Here are side-by-side comparisons of the Palm Pre, the 1st Storm (which basically is the same as the 2nd) and the iphone 3G (which will be rehashed with 3.0 this year):
http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/compare.php?id%5B%5D=1985&id%5B%5D=1864&id%5B%5D=1656&id%5B%5D=&id%5B%5D=