One of these two phones is going to become the latest “last phone I’ll ever own:”
-
- Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Storm 2
-
- Motorola Droid, from Verizon Wireless
I bought a Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Storm (original) about two months ago. Needless to say, I’m back using my BlackBerry Curve; I just couldn’t get used to the typing delay on the Storm. Its operating system is slow and buggy, written for the likes of the Curve and the 83xx rather than the Storm; consequently, because of the higher demands of the Storm, it crashed a lot.
The Storm 2 promises to be an all-new experience, with BlackBery OS 5.0, and the hit-and-miss SurePress “button” under the floating glass screen has been replaced with a slick piezoelectric sensor arrangement, promising multi-touch capability a-la the iPhone (a phone which everyone but iPhone users love to hate).
The Storm 2 has WiFi capability–long clamored-for by Verizon subscribers, but something I really don’t care much about, as Verizon’s 3G EV-DO data network is so fast that I don’t wont for it on the devices I already have. However, Engadget has rumored that the Storm 2 will have MiFi capability–which means that the Storm 2 is, essentially, a mobile wireless access point, with which I share the staggeringly-fast 3G EV-DO Internet connection with up to five laptops, which would connect to my Storm using their 802.11 WiFi:
So I would be a walking WiFi hotspot. That is freaking cool.
If this is actually true, then this device is chock-full of win and it will be my next “last phone I will ever own.”
But there’s also a new contender on the block: The Droid, by Motorola, is coming exclusively to Verizon. Its claim to fame? It’s not the fact that it has a a fold-away keyboard–like a number of smartphones these days–but rather, it boasts version 2.0 of the Google Android operating system. While BlackBerry has an App store, Android is completely open-source and I can finally have a phone I can develop my very own apps for. (and don’t none of you WinMo users tout the ability to write apps for your phones–WinMo is buggier than a bait store and I’d sooner own an iPhone before I owned a WinMo phone.)
I’ll wait until Christmas. Then I’ll take the plunge with one of these two phones. But either way, I will have a new phone come New Years.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
[...] I had been eyeing with some interest the Droid and the Storm 2, but after having a chance yesterday to fiddle with both at very great length, I found that they were both let-downs. The Storm 2’s SurePress is markedly improved, but not enough for me to eschew a real keyboard in its favor; besides, the rumor that it was a Mifi access point turned out to be disappointingly false. The Droid is an impressive phone, but a few little touches here and there indicated to me that someone, either at Motorola or Google, had forgotten that this thing was a phone first and a computerreally second, something that Apple had kept clearly in mind when designing the interface for the iPhone. And I really didn’t care for its physical keyboard. Flat and featureless, it was scarcely better than the SurePress on the Storm 2. [...]