[rsarno]

As pumped as i was for this phone, i wasn't blown away when putting my hands on it finally today at the VZW store (located on Wall St, and Water, NYC). In fact my friend i went with who went in convinced he was going to buy it based on all reviews, walked out saying he changed his mind and will be sticking with iPhone.

The guy i talked to (his name tag said "device manager") said it will be shipping with .65. When i mentioned i heard of .8X he said not a chance, its shipping with .65 for sure. Probable future updates, but no doubt about shipping with .65

I didn't notice any bugs that stood out to me, but i only handled it for literally maybe 90 seconds. My friend was with my and he toyed with it for about 5min and he didn't notice anything that stood out.

The lack of the "flicking" that the iPhone has, is a huge downfall. Such a simple thing, i don't know why they didn't add it.

The second i got my hands on it i knew i didn't have too much time (2 guys waiting to play with it, and me and friend were limited on time), i immediately asked to get me to the email section so i can try typing. The clicking is fine, no issues at all and it felt very nice.

That's about all i can report, sorry for the lack of info.

If there are any outstanding questions let me know, i can probably run down and ask him and report back.

[moni19]

.65 is what it's shipping with, that has been confirmed....now, we just have to find out if it will be updated upon activation...that it is the speculation right now that it will updated to .76 or above once activated...who knows though

[dschwagl]

The negatives:
1) Very slow scrolling up and down and from side to side. Don't know if I can live with that or not. Hopefully new software will correct that.

2) For women with fake nails - forget it! If you want to use this phone you will save a ton of money on fake nails because you have to touch the screen with your fingertip - not your nail or a stylus or the back of a pen. Luckily I keep my nails short!

3) The typing will take some time to get used to. Even the verizon rep who was doing the demo said he had been working on it all week and was still trying to get used to it.

That all being said, I think Iam still going for it tomorrow. My only concern is I won't be able to return it as I bought a Centro last week and am returning my Centro for the Storm. The screen is gorgeous on the Storm.

BUT, there were mixed reviews with people trying it out. Some of the guys with bigger hands were having a hard time with the typing on the little key pads.

Should be interesting to see how this all shakes out and if the lines are as big as everyone thinks. My store was really trying to get people to leave their name and have one overnight expressed to them on Saturday. Must be their tactic not to overload the store with units.

[sarfrazfamily]

so did you change your mind as well or just your friend?

[rsarno]

so did you change your mind as well or just your friend?

My friends mind has changed, no doubt. My mind is still not made up, but that little experience i had didnt exactly help its case.

Im not dumb enough to let a 10 second handson experience make or break a sale for me, but at the same time i went in there kinda hoping for a better experience. I think i decided for sure i will wait maybe a week, and read what some other reviews say, and see what the current update status is, etc.

But i am still very excited about this phone. The lack of the "flicking" of web pages is really much worse than i ever considered. It makes the "user experience" appear to be much MUCH better on the iphone

I tried to justify it to my friend by saying "dude, you either by a phone to surf the web and play around, or you buy it to be a business tool .. either wy there will be compromises" and he just looked at me and said "but there arent any compromises on the iphone"

when i mentioned the cut/paste, and a few other features ... he just said he can live without them for now, and might even expect an OS update on his iphone at some point, bu either way he wont be buying a storm just for that. He said he would be giving too much up that he currently has on his iphone, to gain very little on the storm. Not worth switching.

But again as for myself, i will give it a week and read some more reviews.

[jimithng23]

The negatives:
1) Very slow scrolling up and down and from side to side. Don't know if I can live with that or not. Hopefully new software will correct that.

there are settings that will allow the scrolling to speed up or slow down based on your preference...

its REALLY hard to get an idea how great a device is after a few days, let alone < 5 minutes of playing with it

[01deuce]

just played with one for about an hour. I was told they had just updated from .61 to .65 on the demo unit and that it was done ota,but .65 would be the version for release. i found typing very easy for both modes. it did freeze up once took about 5 minutes to reboot just by shutting it off and turning back on (could not do a battery pull) biggest problem i saw was at times it wanted to switch between portrait and landscape with very little movement and took 3-5 seconds to correct its self. but when trying to switch it seemed much better. manager would not tell me how many they had for tommorow. and the GAP is not a concern.

[rsarno]

one thing i forgot to add ...

one thing i did try was sped typing. Now i understand that it takes getting used to so you dont hit the wrong keys, so i didnt worry about that. I just banged my 2 thumbs on it first slow, then a bit faster, until i was finally banging away without even looking, just lifting each thumb fast enough for the other to bang down again ... the guy thought i was nuts lol

those who are looking to type fast, or even slightly faster than a snails pace, are in for a surprise.

i think i can live with it, but it will definitely be a lot slower than im used to, or would like to be.

so while that's not a deal breaker for me, maybe it will be for some people. Although im sure you can adjust the sensitivity, which i didn't fool with

[rsarno]

what i meant was that the phone couldn't keep up when i quickened my pace. so lets say i hit 8 buttons (i made sure to click, and have finger removed prior to hitting next one) it might have shown 3 that actually registered as being hit. it might be an internal setting, but the one i used couldn't keep up with fast typing.

[S3th13]

Theres an internal speed setting to allow your keys to register faster.

[sgtmilstack]

The lack of the "flicking" that the iPhone has, is a huge downfall. Such a simple thing, i don't know why they didn't add it.

Maybe they wanted to prevent the Storm from being called an "IPHONE CLONE" I can just imagine that slogan on every AppleBoy (and DL AppleBoy) site.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[rsarno]

i think it will be called that anyhow lol