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Hey, we knew this was coming — but we’re hearing murmurs that actual AT&T BlackBerry Bold owners are starting to get their visual voicemail updates rolling out to them. The voicemail features allow you to store up to 40 messages at a time, and add numbers to contacts from voicemail. We’ll let you know all ot the perks of software update v4.6.0.508 when we get it up and running on our own Bold, but hit the read link for AT&T’s rundown (warning: it’s a PDF).
[Via Boy Genius Report]

When we brought you those exclusive Storm 2 pics and details just a short while ago, we touched upon the “new approach to text entry,” but unfortunately didn’t have any details. However, lightning has struck again, and our source has gotten back to let us know that the Storm 2 does indeed have a stationary screen “just like the iPhone’s,” which lines up with what Boy Genius Report is hearing. That’s right, it looks like RIM is axing its SurePress technology in favor of a more conventional touchscreen, though our tipster says the model he has may allow for some type of haptic feedback to be enabled. This should be great news for all you folks having dust-under-screen issues on your first-gen Storms, but obviously, we’ll have to wait and see until this thing gets, you know, legit.

Better late than never, we suppose — joining Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Palm, RIM’s officially opened the BlackBerry Application Storefront to submissions, just a hair after the December launch we’d originally heard. It sounds like RIM’s going to be doing more an Apple-style closed market than an Android-style free-for-all: apps will be “considered” for inclusion in the Storefront, which is scheduled to go live in March at CTIA. The lockdown’s not a big shocker considering RIM’s corporate userbase, but we’re can’t say we’re huge fans of this new trend toward closed stores. In any event, it sounds like RIM’s seeing big potential for its fledging shop — co-CEO Jim Balsillie recently told a panel that he’s expecting “dozens of music apps” in the store, which he thinks will be able to capitalize on the (sigh) “birth of digital music 2.0.” We’re not sure exactly what Jim means — he mostly said things like “remarkable revenue enhancement strategy” and “radical and dramatic enhancing set of opportunities” — but we’re all for shaking up the music business, so bring it on. It can’t be any worse than SlotMusic.
[Via Boy Genius Report]

Being another first for BlackBerry, RIM has delved into the widely competed touchscreen market.  Not wanting to be sucked in as “another iPhone wannabe” however, RIM has developed several unique technologies in an attempt to diverge from the traditional touchscreen stigma.  So how does this phone actually fare in-hand, and how does it stack up to its competitors?

After the break, we find the answers to this question, AND we smash the thing apart for some good ol’ teardown analysis.

BlackBerry Storm Review

First things first, at first sight, this phone is gorgeous.  We think its one of the better looking phones on the market today.  It’s got slants to the device, along with metallic backings - a first for BlackBerry.  Not only that, but the battery door ACTUALLY WORKS.  It’s buttons are well placed, the piano black/matte black/metallic black trims complement each other very well, and the chromed sides actually don’t feel like cheap plastic.  If this is any indication at what the Javelin will look like, then I’ve got good feelings about it.

Next off, the screen is another winner.  Although it doesn’t have the brightness nor the sharpness and pixel density to match the Bold, its HVGA screen on a 3.25? screen seem to work just fine for movies, tv shows, browsing (we’ll get to that), and anything else that requires lots of screen real estate.  Visuals are obviously accompanied by sound, and while the sound is definitely capable of producing loud obnoxious noises, it doesn’t match the Bold’s quality; it doesn’t have much depth and just sounds like pure treble.

Media experiences in general, on the Storm, are fantastic.  It’s built in way more codecs for audio and video, has a decent interface for finding and playing music, and works as music player.  In fact, though their SurePress technology isn’t mentioned in this review’s “Greats”, it works really well for controlling your music.  RIM has mentioned countless times their intention to dive into the consumer market, and with these capabilities, it definitely works.

Luke Warm

Luke warm features are features that aren’t good, nor are they bad.  The first feature on the Storm to receive this fairly mediocre grading is, you guessed it: SurePress technology.  RIM has attempted to really give BlackBerry owners a touchscreen alternative without feeling frustrated by their keyboard.  By giving tactile feedback, you understand the timing for typing, and once you get rhythm, you get rhyme speed.  It’s implementation works rather well for menu selections, the dialpad (it’s honestly fun to type numbers), and as mentioned, the media player.  Unfortunately, typing, even on a gigantic landscape keyboard, just doesn’t feel right.  It’s mucky, because once you gain speed, you instantly hit an error.  This is due to the touchscreen not being able to recognize another finger while the button is being depressed.  If it had multi-touch functionality, letting you place your finger while you’re pressing another finger, we bet that implementation would be glorious.  For now, however, we got to stick with infuriating spelling mistakes from going too fast.  Not only that, but typing on the screen takes a lot more effort than a traditional QWERTY keyboard, and a regular touchscreen keyboard — you have to press the WHOLE screen down.  It’s easy near the edges, because the radius from the centre gives you easy torque, but anything middle-to-top-row is becomes a pain when you’re hammering out gigantic emails.

Another luke warm feature is the browser.  Without going into performance metrics, the browser still isn’t up to par with its webkit-based friends (i.e. Safari/Chrome-Lite-ish).  While it’s true that it’s drastically improved over previous generations, it’s nowhere near the level of Safari.  Format pages like IGN still give it your good ol’ lists of links and text for you to scroll around.  This bring us to our next point: capacitive touch.

What’s annoying about Verizon phones is that their capacitive touch phones (including the Motorola Krave) always come with a STICKY screen protector.  It leaves a nasty sticky feeling to the screen, which totally harps on first impressions.  What the Storm needs is a good glossing of the screen - it’ll just generally feel more touch-accepting.  The use of gestures is also inconsistent, and without the rubberband effect deployed by other phones, scrolling feels, lacking.  Viewing any relatively long page will have you scrolling like a mad man, because the screen stops when your finger is lifted off.

Gripes

Applications.  Back in the old days, BlackBerry was competing against Palm for the enterprise space, and even then, the distinction of Palm was its better third party support.  Storm seems to be the first to really try and break this stigma, but… it fails (obviously, since its in the gripes section).  What Apple and Google have done was generate application “outlets” in which you can download and install third party apps, with the latter even focusing their entire handset around this concept.  RIM has developed an “Applications Centre”, which was carrier specific.  This was a poor choice, as carrier-specific applications (namely, VZ Navigator, and other VZ products) are pretty useless, and aren’t anywhere near as diverse as the App Store and the Android Market.

Finally, performance.  This is what totally kills the device in our opinion.  Everything about this phone lags.  Ever since the videos were leaked showing its UI, people have been complaining about the animation lag and hoping that everything would sort itself out by launch.  Unfortunately, even with the last-minute flashing of devices, nothing has changed.  Right on the main menu, scrolling through applications gives a choppy feeling.  Even the media application takes a while to boot, and you end up double clicking in an attempt to get things going.  When I plugged the unit into the computer attempting to sideload, even that dragged in performance.  Typical BlackBerrys have been awesome at sideloading when enumerated through Mass Storage Class, but this one, in traditional Verizon fare, runs on MTP mode for syncing with Rhapsody and Windows Media Player.  Transferring movies to watch on your phone, just plainly sucks.

Conclusion

Everything about BlackBerry is defined around efficiency and its ability to get things done.  The Storm stays true in its ability to feel connected, with perfect integration of corporate e-mails, personal e-mails, texts, contacts, Facebook, My Space etc.  Unfortunately, actually using the device, causes an uprising of frustration.  It doesn’t flow well, and goes against what all the other BlackBerry’s have been so good at.  I feel that RIM pushed this out the door for the holiday season, when it actually should’ve been released in 2009.

phoneWreck Score for the BlackBerry Storm: 7 wrecks out of 10.

BlackBerry Storm Teardown

Enough about the phone!  Let’s dig into the juiciness of the Storm.  Remember how I said that the Bold was one of the easiest devices to teardown?  The Storm is the complete opposite.  There are a bunch of hidden screws that require prying off areas such as the camera plexiglass cover, the chin of the device, and the stickers that surround the back.  Also, the shielding around the ICs are even harder to get at than before.  You’ll need some razor sharp wire cutters to get through that (or you could solder the sides off if you’re that keen on it).  But if you were intending on opening up this device, without a scratch in the end, I wish you good luck.

Nevertheless, we got the thing open for you all to see.  The PCB is actually ridiculously small.  And everything actually fits on there including the processor, memory units, all the transceivers and power amps, and things like Bluetooth ICs.  There’s some random spots of circuitry on the other spots of the phone as well, but its amazing how well everything is integrated.  We’ve put the block diagram out below.  Note: several things on here are educated guesses.  We’ve noted these with the asterisks.  Unlike previous teardowns, the ICs on this device seem rather hard to identify.

Most important to note is the implementation of Qualcomm’s latest MSM7600 processor.  When you view the datasheet, its pretty easy to guess what’s wrong with this phone.  There’s just too much functionality jammed integrated into the processor, including audio codecs, graphics processing, and even GPS functionality.  Samsung’s memory MCP from the Bold makes another notable appearance.  Avago takes care of the CDMA Power Amps, but the GSM Power Amps seem unmarked, which makes it hard to find.  We’ll update this if/when we find out though.

This being primarily a CDMA device, Qualcomm brings their entire chipset onto the line including its RF Transceivers for both CDMA/EV-DO, an integrated GSM/UMTS chip, and its PMIC.  TriQuint Semiconductors also makes an appearance.  They’ve previously been used for Duplexers in previous mainstream devices, but its difficult to identify what this IC does, so we’ve assumed that it’s something to do with managing power.  Bluetooth functionality is again won by CSR, while SiRF is notably absent due to the GPS integration into the processor.  A West Bridge chip is also notably absent, with USB functionality also being driven by the processor.  STMicroelectronics seems to have developed the Accelerometer, as the chip in this phone seems eerily similar to one of their other Accelerometer chips in a previous breakdown.  Finally, with Synaptics boasting much of its multi-touch capabilities, we’re making guesses that the BlackBerry Storm uses a Synaptics IC for driving the capacitive touch.  It’s possible that a full multi-touch can be implemented on this hardware, but whether it’ll require updates to the actual hardware or just the firmware, remains to be seen.

Of course, what you’ve came here to see is not just the circuitry.  You wanted to see how the actual button looks like, no?  Here it is, in plain view!  It’s a regular button, pushed by a marked Magnesium Alloy plate with a bump.  Enjoy responsibly.

Thank You for Reviewing.

We’re certain it has been a painstaking weekend for you Storm-owning Mac users, but the long-awaited OTA download for the first firmware update is finally available. For those somewhat confused, the update we covered on Friday was exclusively available via the Windows-only RIM Desktop Manager application; now, Storm owners can suck down v4.7.0.75 without a liaison. Early reports are pretty positive, with jkOnTheRun noting that the troublesome lag that came bundled with the handset was now all but history. The 14MB download (plus installation) is said to take around 20 to 30 minutes, so fire yours up and let us know how things turn out.

With day zero of the Age of the Storm (well, Verizon’s day zero, anyway) now behind us, it’s probably a good idea to pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and reflect on what just went down. First and foremost, we’re hearing that stock levels are pretty bleak at the moment in many areas; in some cases, stores didn’t get as many Storms as they’d been expecting, leading to speedy sell-outs. Some of those that were able to snatch a scarce unit were met with activation issues, Verizon’s servers seemingly meeting the same fate as AT&T’s and Apple’s on iPhone 3G launch day. Will the situation improve? We can only imagine — but it’s hard to say just how long it’ll take before you’ll be able to stroll into the store (or shady mall kiosk) of your choice and score a Storm sight unseen, especially in light of the firmware drama unfolding before our very eyes. In the meantime, owners (and hopefuls, too), keep sending in your reports from the field!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

We’re getting mixed results here, but the word on the street is that Best Buys around the colonies will start taking pre-orders for the BlackBerry Storm tomorrow for a stiff $50 deposit — a pretty good indication that they’re expecting elevated (if not outright insane) demand when it finally launches this month. At least one store we’ve called has corroborated the claim, so you might want to drop by your friendly local big box tomorrow and see what’s what if you’re keen on being the first kid on your block with one of these monsters.

We’ve seen most everything about the BlackBerry Storm that Verizon wanted us to see, but this is the first real (clear) glimpse at what the UI is apt to look, taste and smell like whenever it decides to ship. Of course, we’d still caution you to take all of this with a grain of salt until Vodafone comes clean, but the screen shots captured in the read link do look fairly believable. Can you stand any more teasin’? If so, you know where to head.

RIM’s BlackBerry Bold wasn’t technically supposed to have launched already — that’s the magic in being all vague about a release date, we guess — but we can safely say we’re absolutely relieved to finally have something out in the open here. Even if it’s not carved in stone, per se. An internal AT&T e-mail discovered today notes that the “latest ETA” for the release of the Bold is October 27th (with a price TBD), though we’d feel a lot better about that if it said “definitive release date.” At any rate, we’ll find out in just ten days. Ten. Days.

Just when we’re all geared up to get crazy corporate with a bunch of Bold purchases, RIM has to go and make our lives difficult by reminding us that the Javelin / Curve 8900 is out there — lurking — just waiting to make a grand entrance sometime in the next few months. A new video posted to CrackBerry goes through the 8900’s finer points, noting that the handset clocks in just a bit more compact than its big brother, features a slightly smaller, higher dot pitch display, and carries over an original Curve-style keyboard with spaced keys rather than the flowing design employed on the Bold (for what it’s worth, the narrator seems to like both styles equally). Interestingly, it’s noted that this prototype employs an older trackball design that’ll allegedly be replaced with a more bulletproof design by the time it launches. The lack of 3G is going to be a dream killer for many, but we could see this one getting some retail legs underneath it if the price is right — it’s got WiFi, after all.
In fact, T-Mobile Germany is saying that it’ll have the 8900 next month — a claim we actually believe, since Germany is from the future. The trackball shown on its version of the handset is distinctly different than CrackBerry’s, so it’s looking like the claim of a redesign might hold water.
[Thanks to Alex]