1. halchen's Avatar
    I got my Storm only for a few weeks. I've been excited to explore the new toy heavily. After brought it to my Caribbean cruise vacation, I believe I've have something that worth to share with folks.
    1. Battery usage. If a Storm is used only for phone and email, it really does not consume much energy. However, as a smart phone, most of us use it for many fun activities. Many internet related applications drain a lot of battery. High temperature of the battery is the alert when you're over using the small toy. Therefore, check if a GPS, steaming radio applications are still running in background, check if internet applications are configured properly. For instance, the default update interval of WeatherBug is 15 minutes. Change it to 4 hours or Off would be much better. On a bus in my trip, I watched a 1.5 hours movie on Storm. I also ran Google Map occasionally to check my location. It consumed about 40% battery.
    2. I have a long commute to work. Storm is my iPod. It really does not consume much battery for playing music.
    3. Company email. There is no BES on my company mail server, neither pop and imap access. Because of managing hundreds network devices, the flood of the device alerts could clog my storm if I forward all mails to my Blackberry email. Gmail filter is good solution. I forward all company emails to Gmail. Using its filter deletes emails that I don't need to read on Storm. To further save Storm's resource, I use Gmail client access Gmail instead of forwarding the emails to my Blackberry email account.
    4. Google Maps vs. Blackberry Maps. In general, I like Google Maps user interface. Its map is much clearer and prettier than Blackberry Maps. Especially, its satellite Map could make everyone's eye pop. However, when I was cruising on Caribbean, I got only my GPS spot. No map was available. When I fired up Blackberry Maps, it was the similar on the first screen. However, I was able to change the map scale to smaller. The map appeared when the scale number=12. Bingo! I spotted my location. Of cause, this had to be in the wireless covered area.
    5. Reboot. Several times, I found my Storm was rebooting itself. As an experienced Sr. Systems Engineer, I know there are bugs in the Storm OS. Hopefully, Blackberry developers would be aware of the issue.
    6. Battery Drain. In the first a few days after I got my Storm, I found the battery usage was really high. And the situation was getting worse. I found many threads related to the battery issue on Crackberry forums. I tried many tips and methods. The situation was not improved. The temperature of the battery was pretty high. I even turned off, and then turned it back. The battery was keeping drain. I had to recharge it in the middle day although it was always changed all night. I did a last retry before deciding to return it to Verizon. I reset the Storm by removing the battery for a few minutes. To my surprise, the battery kept cold after turning it on. The drain problem was gone! Why and how to trap into the problem, I wish Blackberry developers would be able to answer it.
    Storm is really great toy that always company with me. Hopefully, the new version of OS could make it much more solid.
    04-16-09 09:36 PM
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