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Sometimes it’s the unsung workhorses that deserve the lion’s share of the praise, and that might just be the case with the aging Samsung BlackJack II — a phone that you probably wouldn’t expect to top Consumer Reports’ January 2009 ratings of popular smartphones. Sure, it may not be the shiniest device on the market these days, but you’ve got to admit it’s just about as functional as you’d ever need a business-class handset to be with GPS, HSDPA, and WinMo 6.1, which gladly sucks up Exchange accounts until you’re blue in the face. When you factor in the fact that it runs just $80 these days on an AT&T contract in a choice of four colors… okay, yeah, we can kinda see it. The iPhone 3G and T-Mobile G1 don’t play second fiddle terribly often these days (they were way down in the middle of the Consumer Reports pack in this testing cycle, in fact), so let’s just let this old dog have one more moment in the spotlight, shall we?

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.

Described to us once by those in the know as “a project that would’ve been,” this Helio-badged, Samsung-built, multimedia-happy slider just surfaced on the Heliocity forums. Samsung shipped tweaked versions of this handset (based on the Samsung F400) with B&O and Armani branding, but there’s no telling if “Helio by Virgin” still has plans to bring this to market. More shots after the break.

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.

While the N97 was free to fondle, the slightly less exciting E63 was decidedly bolted to a table, so we had to take what angles we could get. The phone is basically a cheap-o version of the E71: Nokia figured it had a good thing going on in that QWERTY candybar, and decided to spread the love at a lower price point, with a slightly thicker, plastic handset. The good news is that no matter what you do to cheapen the phone, the E63 comes from good stock, and is really a compelling form factor. The slight bump in thickness is negligible, and while the cheaper materials are easily distinguished from the luxury feel of the E71, the phone by no means feels cheap. Except for the keyboard. For some reason Nokia opted to remove the hardened, clickier E71 keys and replace them with a softer, rubberier keyboard with a considerable amount of distributed give to it — that still leaves it as one of Nokia’s best QWERTYs to date, but we greatly prefer the E71. The other compelling difference between the phone and its inspiration is the inclusion of a full 3.5mm headphone jack, instead of the mini jack found on the E71. Not bad at all, but we’d guess Nokia saved a lot more money in materials and manufacturing process than with the sorry removal of GPS and HSDPA.

It’s been a nice little while since we’ve seen any new navigators from Medion, but the outfit’s hitting back with its relatively forgettable GoPal P5430. The European PND sports a 5-inch touchscreen display, integrated TMC antenna, fingerprint sensor, text-to-speech functionality, an inbuilt FM transmitter and pre-installed NAVTEQ maps of Western and Eastern Europe. Like we said, forgettable — but you should know it’s priced at £175 ($269) just in case you’re tempted.

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.

Nokia’s North American N96 has already made an appearance at Best Buy Mobile locations but, if you’re the die hard type that prefers to keep things as Nokia-centric as possible, you’ll no doubt be pleased to know that Nokia’s flagship phone is now also available at Nokia’s two flagship stores in New York and Chicago. You will have to pay a slight premium for all that Nokia-ness, however, with the phone running a hefty $842 (unlocked, of course) at the stores compared to the $800 Best Buy is asking. Those with a bit more will power and slightly less affection for Nokia may want to think twice though, as Amazon now also has the phone listed for just $705.99, albeit with a promised ship date of November 9th.