BlackBerry Storm 9500 Unlocked Cell Phone 3 2 MP Camera GPS MicroSD Slot RIM International Version Without Warranty Black
Long-lasting interchangeable Battery
Keep up with the demands of your busy days with less recharging. The BlackBerry Storm smartphone features a long-lasting 1400 mAh battery to help you do what you do, longer. And when you’re on the go and don’t have time for a battery recharge, simply swap it out. With an easy-access backplate, you can remove and replace your battery quickly in just seconds.
Easy & Accurate SurePress Touch Screen Navigation
The BlackBerry Storm smartphone features a SurePress touch screen – an innovative, pressable touch screen that allows fast navigation and accurate typing. It’s easy to use. Just slide your fingertip across the screen to move the cursor. When you’ve highlighted the letter, number or program features you’reselecting, press down on the screen to input your choice. It’s that easy.
Vivid, High Resolution Display
You’ll barely believe your eyes when you experience the vivid, high resolution 480×360 pixel screen on the BlackBerry Storm smartphone. Displaying over 65,000 colors, the awe-inspiring display brings brilliant new life to all of your favorite video clips, pictures, games and more.
Camera and Video Recording – Snap and Send
Connectivity Switch To Calls
In addition to the SuperPress touch-screen interface, the familiar BlackBerry phone buttons are at the buttom of the device. This ensures an effortless transition from using the smartphone features of your device to taking a call on it – without compromising the information currently display on your screen.
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Star Blackberry Strom Casued a Storm
The Storm that was sent to me was not unlocked. I received it the day before I was leaving town. I took it with me to Cairo, Egypt and when I arrive there, discovered it was still locked. The advert said no warranty. I was informed later that there was infact a 30 day warranty but they were not too forcoimng with this revelation. I had to pay to have it unlocked. The person I dealt with was nice and tried to help, but in the end it just was not a good experience. I can not recommend them nor will I ever use them again. Additionally, it was used and even though I explained this to them they never addresse this issue. The Storm works great and recommend without a doubt.
1 Star Stay away from this phone. Not consistent with Blackberry standards
This is the most disappointing phone I’ve ever had. Typing is difficult and editing text is nearly impossible. Blackberry has definitely jumped on the Iphone bandwagon quickly without doing their homework. Its hard for me to understand how some people give this phone a four or five star rating. Its a little suspicious.
Stay away unless you enjoy pulling the hair out of your head or you are very patient and forgiving person.
3 Stars Disappointing but workable–mostly
As of 5/22/09 this phone still has lot of glitches that are suppose to be fixed in a software update that was to come out months ago–which keeps getting pushed back. The only reason I kept this phone rather than returning it for another is that I use verizon and can not get the I Phone.
This phone has a screen that you first touch and then press to activate what you are touching. I personally like that better than the I phone because I can be sure I am touching what I mean to be and then making the execution. I also like the feel of pressing the keyboard down–especially when typing. Some people prefer the I phone because it is faster. One of the problems is that when you place a call and put the phone up to your cheek, you can easily press the screen changing it to speaker or mute or some unknown thing that takes awhile to reset before you can hear the call. You can fix this by purchasing an application that locks the screen. The storms lock feature will not lock the screen during a call so you have to purchase this after market application. Another thing is that the keyboard is hidden when you place a call so if you need to put in your password/numbers you need to look at the phone, select the keyboard and it shows up. It just isn’t convenient or intuitive.
Another extremely odd thing is that the phone turns off the signal all by itself, randomly. If you don’t look at the phone, you may not realize the signal is turned off (therefore you can’t receive calls, emails, etc). A software update is promised to fix this at some unknown time. We purchased two Storms and both do this–a common problem according to verizon. One of the phones does this about 1 time per day. They other did it several times per day. Verizon changed that storm out for a replacement storm. So now, both phones turn themselves off only about 1 time per day.
Software is glitchy when it comes to notifications. You can turn all sound off or turn it off for each individual thing. If you turn it off for each individual thing, sometimes it decides to make sound anyway. According to verizon, there is no fix for this–other than a hard reboot that erases everything but doesn’t guarantee a fix–and in fact, has never fixed ours. So, if we don’t want the phone to randomly decide to make noise, we have to turn all sound off. Of course that includes the phone ring along with all the data rings.
This phone is painfully slow, although I can not compare it to other blackberry’s as I have not had one before. I could not do real work on it. Luckily, I am not a business user so there isn’t anything that I can’t put off until I can get to a computer. I have tried looking at and editing word documents but have never had the patience to deal with it after waiting and waiting and waiting for them to load. Likewise, using internet is painful.
A plus to blackberry is that you can use blackberry messenger to IM any other blackberry user that you are connected to (free connection–you just both have to agree to it). This saves money on texting because you don’t have to add that feature or you can get a smaller texting package. We use blackberry IM all the time and love it.
I sync up my blackberry to my mac computer–when it agrees to do it. Again, this seems like a random thing, although it works about 90% of the time. There could be lots of improvements in this sync, however, I can sync my phonebook (without categories), calendar, and itunes. I tunes is not as user friendly on this as the I Phone, however, if it isn’t the main reason you have the phone, it is tolerable. If you want to search songs and change playlists or get creative though, you won’t want to do it on this phone. The speakers on the phone have a very “tinny” sound if you try to play music through them. It is annoying to me but I didn’t buy the phone for good speakers so it isn’t a big deal.
The camera on the phone is fairly decent and has a flash. Sometimes the flash washes out things too much–but again, I didn’t buy this phone for the camera so it is fine for me. Most of the pictures sync with i photo without a problem, although sometimes it says that they aren’t recognizable.
I love that it has a removable memory card. It comes with 8 g but can be upgraded to 16. Nice to only have to change a memory card rather than buying a whole new phone just to get more memory.
There are not nearly as many apps for this as there are for I Phone and very few of them are free. This may be fine for business users but it is frustrating for me.
I love the look of the phone and the pre-loaded ring tones. I also like the flexibility to move icons and put them in folders and customize the phone.
This phone gets emails automatically and that is great. No having to log in and check emails.
The voice activated dialing works about 50% of the time without training. I find myself not using this feature although there may be ways to customize it and make it work better.
When the I phone comes to verizon I will replace this in a heartbeat. Until then, I feel like this is better than nothing. Although based on some reviews, I may be wrong–other blackberries may be better. I am especially disappointed with how buggy this phone is and the promises of software fixes that never seem to come. And this phone has been on the market for awhile.
This is a buyer beware phone for sure. It also falls into the category of “settling” until there is something better.
1 Star Slower than any phone out there!
This phone aggravates me to no end. The update for the phone is taking so long that there is an unofficial one out there that people are finding and downloading. It is soooo slow! Want to make a call? Well you will have to wait. Want to surf the net? Well, dial up is faster! Want to check out that cool application you downloaded? Well you will have to wait until the busy icon stops and then it comes back and you end up waiting 30 seconds to a minute to access anything on this phone! I have to take the battery out daily! Sometimes twice or more a day to refresh the software! But even that doesn’t do very much! I have even missed several calls because pressing the answer button doesn’t respond quick enough! I am going to contact Verizon and I am getting rid of this phone and getting a different model. No more Crapberry for me! The iphone, though a terrible service company, is way better than this garbage! Now THAT phone is fast! The applications run smoother, quicker and just the interface is better.
5 Stars 5-Stars…but be careful when buying to check a few things!
All in all I am VERY satisfied with this phone! I have not found it to be slow at all. In fact in a side by side test, it loads web pages and apps much faster than my daughters iPhone. Also, I have not had any of the syncing issues described in other reviews (although I’m using a PC, not an Apple).
Some have said they don’t care for the clickable screen. I REALLY like it! Although my fingers aren’t huge they arn’t tiny either and the QWERTY keyboard works for me just fine (although I’d definitly recommend landscape mode when typing). I have noticed that the more you use the typing feature the more you get a “feel” for typing on the virtual keyboard.
My only issue with this phone was getting a well built unit. The first phone I bought had some kind of contaminant under the glass of the screen. Phone#2 had a bad mic, Phone#3 had a problem “clicking” on one edge of the screen. I’m on phone#4 currently and I think this one is a winner (knock wood). I will say that Verizon switched out the phone each time, no questions asked and sincerely wanted me to be happy with my purchase.
Minor complaints (not strong enough to deduct a Star):
1. Music data (album name, artist, etc…) should be editable on the device, instead of just on windows before you transfer the song over.
2. The data displayed while a song is playing does not appear to be configurable.
3. Hoping for a 32gb SD card option although 16mb is probably fine.
4. Agree with the previous review re:placement of the sd card. It would have made more sense to put it on the outside somewhere to make it easier to swap out.
Overall, I would highly recommend this phone and would advise that one just be picky to make sure your phone doesn’t have any functional issues.
Don
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