The Blackberry Storm

I've been using a Windows Mobile PDA phone for some time and I rely on its PDA features. But many of our clients have bought Blackberry phones, so I decided I would switch when the Storm became available. That would help us better support Blackberry phone users on the networks we support.

iPhone
By the way, I would love to try an iPhone, but our company is locked into nearly a dozen two-year contracts with Verizon. We like Verizon, and the iPhone is only available on AT&T, which would be costly.

Early Christmas!
My Blackberry Storm arrived a couple weeks ago. How fun to get and try something new. I activated it and configured it, but found that because I use a Mac I couldn't install many of the applications I rely on. And the BB Desktop Manager wouldn't work on my virtual Vista machine. Hmmm...

So I began looking for replacement applications. Though disappointed at this point, I was okay with changing in the name of progress. I deal with that a lot...

Exchange Server Software
Then we installed and configured our Blackberry Professional Software; a scaled down version of Blackberry Enterprise Server. We were told it was nearly the same software, but with a thirty-user limit. Well, it wouldn't synchronize between my phone and our Exchange server. But fortunately it came with a complimentary technical support incident, so we decided to give 'em a call.

A day and a half later of almost constant tech support and engineering, the synchronization began. w00t! BB said they weren't used to working with virtual servers, and that was our problem. (Those of us who work with virtual servers know that wasn't the issue.)

Finally, I as on my way to enjoying the Blackberry experience. That is, until synchronization stopped about twenty-four hours later. Hmmm...

Well, on to the actual phone...
I found it very hard to type on the phone. It often wanted to use a key my thumb was barely touching rather than the one it was entirely over. That made for very slow texting. In addition, it was really hard to move the cursor back to a position where I needed to make a correction, so I found myself having to backspace a lot to correct errors.

When the phone synchronized with exchange, it didn't pick up all of the contact data. So I had to correct a lot of my contact data.

The phone got very good cellular connections even in weak areas, and the camera was excellent. But those weren't enough for me, so I switched back to my old Windows Mobile PDA phone after a couple of weeks of trying to make the Blackberry work.

Conclusion
If you are a non-corporate user who wants this phone almost exclusively for making calls, playing music, taking pictures, etc, it's a good phone. If you're a corporate user who needs to rely on its PDA functionality, you may be disappointed by how difficult it is to navigate.