[Mackman37]

The current OS (.75) on the Storm sucks. The newest leaked one available(.85) is better but still sucks. When is RIM going to get their act together? I know many of you are thinking its not RIM its Verizon, but guess what, its not. I think we all need a 5.** release. After seeing how good an OS can be (pre), I think RIM needs to step up big and soon. We dont need minor tweaks to a broken OS we need one that can really make the device preform to its potential. Now before I go too far and this ends up in the rants and raves sub forums lets get back on topic. The storm needs a 5.** release bad. I am thinking that 09 is really going to be the year that touch screen fly and if RIM wants to stay in the game they need to have 5.** on the market by the first half of the year. What do you guys think that the OS 5. will have. As I see it RIM will need something really nice to maintain its market share in the smart phone race.

Oh and to make it clear I dont really care about the small fixes that RIM and Verizon have planned with the 4.** releases for the storm. I want feedback on what you guys hope for and need to see with the 5.** release.

[cray1000]

honestly if your not happy with the UI/OS as it is now, i would really consider returning the device.

I dont think we will see a major UI overhaul. As mentioned in the other thread, i cant think of a single device that had a major UI overhaul after its release.

unfortunately if RIM does a press release that they have been working on this 5.x major new os that is amazing tomorrow, it will most likely never come to the storm anyways.

I am hoping for momentum scrolling and pinch zooming and rubber band scrolling. but even that may be a reach.

[jkunk]

.75 is pretty good for me, i do a memory clean once a day when it starts going slow, and then its back to good after that, only problem i have is the camera lag sometimes but i dont take many pics with it so its good for me

[fuller45]

it's a phone, not a spaceship.

[bigman2]

Wrong subforum... You want the Rants and Raves subforum.

For my money, RIM is doing a pretty good job, but then I didn't buy the Storm expecting it to be this magical all-in-one convergence device. I wanted it primarily because of the big beautiful screen (which it more than delivered on), to have some moderate PDA functionality, and to be able to access email on the go. Sometimes I forget to write things down, and I don't realize it until I don't have time to go back and get the info. The Storm has also delivered quite nicely there. Everything else it can do is just gravy to me. I didn't expect it to be a great MP3 player, GPS, game system, camera, or any of that other stuff. The fact that it can do those things if I find myself without is just a nice bonus.

Would it be nice if it could do all of this, and do it with some serious style? Sure, but give me something that gets the job done over something that just looks pretty any day. You can give me the beat up old jalopy car that will get me where I need to go reliably over the shiny new sports car that is in the shop every other week any time. The Storm gets things done, even if it lacks some of the style of other devices.

[mudpud]

I agree...the phone delivers once you get past the fact that this is a freaking prototype phone. Remember iPhone when it came out?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Mackman37]

honestly if your not happy with the UI/OS as it is now, i would really consider returning the device.

I dont think we will see a major UI overhaul. As mentioned in the other thread, i cant think of a single device that had a major UI overhaul after its release.

unfortunately if RIM does a press release that they have been working on this 5.x major new os that is amazing tomorrow, it will most likely never come to the storm anyways.

I am hoping for momentum scrolling and pinch zooming and rubber band scrolling. but even that may be a reach.

I am not necessarily saying it will come out for the storm. I am just saying that like it or not, phones are moving to touch screen with a slideout key pad. Look at the great phones on the market that use this style. The G1, touch pro, Xperia and soon the pre. It is a great design for a phone because you get the best of both worlds and I am sure blackberry will be introducing a phone that has a touch screen with a keyboard very soon. That being said, the bar is set very high for UI. Now that smartphones are becoming more popular Blackberry really needs to step up with the new 5.** OS. As the Iphone has shown us the consumers, not just business users, want the abilities of a smart phone. I am really hoping that BlackBerry can really step it up with the 5.* software. It really has to be something special with way competitors are making their UI. RIM can not rehash the same old OS and try to pass it off as new.

The only reason I posed this 5.** question in the storm forums is because it is my thinking that some form of touchscreen with a keyboard will be the industry standard in 09 and the storm is the only touch screen BB.

Anyways what are you guys really hopping for and must have in the 5.** OS

[DarwinMejia]

no we dont remember the iphone when it came out.
why dont you refresh everyones memory.

[Mackman37]

Wrong subforum... You want the Rants and Raves subforum.

For my money, RIM is doing a pretty good job, but then I didn't buy the Storm expecting it to be this magical all-in-one convergence device. I wanted it primarily because of the big beautiful screen (which it more than delivered on), to have some moderate PDA functionality, and to be able to access email on the go. Sometimes I forget to write things down, and I don't realize it until I don't have time to go back and get the info. The Storm has also delivered quite nicely there. Everything else it can do is just gravy to me. I didn't expect it to be a great MP3 player, GPS, game system, camera, or any of that other stuff. The fact that it can do those things if I find myself without is just a nice bonus.

Would it be nice if it could do all of this, and do it with some serious style? Sure, but give me something that gets the job done over something that just looks pretty any day. You can give me the beat up old jalopy car that will get me where I need to go reliably over the shiny new sports car that is in the shop every other week any time. The Storm gets things done, even if it lacks some of the style of other devices.

I think the OS forum is a good place considering I really just want to talk about expectations for 5.** and I dont really want to get into the faults of the storm. However I dont think we can talk about a new OS without somewhat addressing the current faults.

[Mackman37]

Ok so let me start off with what I want from 5.**. As I said before I think that the phone market is switching to touch screen with a keyboard. I am almost certain that BB will release a phone with this style so first off the UI needs to be more finger friendly. Next, everything really has to be much more smooth and seamless. With processors becoming more and more powerful I dont understand why simply scrolling through text laggs out as soon as a picture appears. With chips like the Nvidia Tegra our phones should be running very smoothly even with several applications running. I hope for a great new UI in 5.** that implements great chips like the Tegra in the new harware.

Tegra in action

[berryadd1cted]

.75 works. Bottom line. There are no real major faults other than limitations to the phone due to its rather Immature nature of the current Os. That being said, rather than constantly await a better build of Os which will be here in due time, let's be real as the title states and enjoy this bb Os since it is still a great transition from the non touch screen versions.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[berryadd1cted]

There is still a business design mold that they cannot and should not deviate from even as they shift more into the more mainstream mass consumer market segments.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Crucial_Xtreme]

I think the OS forum is a good place considering I really just want to talk about expectations for 5.** and I dont really want to get into the faults of the storm. However I dont think we can talk about a new OS without somewhat addressing the current faults.

If you want to talk about 6.0 go to the main beta discussion forum. This one is for the Storm only.

[bigman2]

I think the OS forum is a good place considering I really just want to talk about expectations for 5.** and I dont really want to get into the faults of the storm. However I dont think we can talk about a new OS without somewhat addressing the current faults.

Well, if BGR is to be believed, OS 5.0 is really just going to be bringing a lot of what Storm and Bold owners already have in 4.6 and 4.7 to Curve and probably Pearl owners.

Who knows if that's true, but it seems a bit early to be thinking about an OS 5.0. It's only been about 2 months, so let's give RIM a chance to get 4.7 up and going. There's a lot of new stuff in the Storm that RIM's developers are learning to program for as they go along. Touch screen devices may have been around for decades, but RIM has never made one until now.

I really think by the 6 month anniversary of the Storm, people will have long forgotten a lot of these early bumps, and will be quite happy with their Storm. It's just the shock of the new, and people's general resistance to change combined with the instant gratification expectations of the fast food and cable TV generation.

Once RIM gets 4.7 pretty well worked out, they can start focusing in earnest on a 4.8 or 5.0. But it'll take time. Software development is a slow tedious process.

But, if I were to think about what I would personally like to see in OS 5.0... I'd like to see a from scratch OS. Rethink EVERYTHING down to the smallest detail. Then maybe make a bit of a hard, and unpopular, decision to just not support anything but the Bold, Storm, and Pearl Flip with the new OS. Then spend some time really thinking about the unique attributes of each device, and really leveraging those in the OS. I'd go with a common kernel, or base OS, and then create custom interfaces for each OS. They'd be similar to one another for obvious reasons, but the Pearl Flip UI might focus less on the trackball and more on the keypad, and the Storm UI would really focus on the touch and click aspect of the device. The Bold would probably be closer to the Pearl Flip, but probably aim for a nice balance of trackball and keypad.

The major problems with this, is that it would take a very long time, and it would be expensive. If RIM started on this today, I wouldn't expect to see anything until about the time the 2 year contract on the Storm was up. But I think having a completely reworked OS would serve RIM well in the future. Having a generic base OS that can be quickly adapted to new devices and provides a lot of the raw functionality of the OS, and then being able to put a UI on top of that that really leverages the unique aspects of each device. Maybe borrow ideas from Linux and Darwin, and have a kind of plugin/module system for the base OS to let RIM mix and match different plugins/modules based on the device.

I would also consider dumping Java as the programming language. I really just don't see Java as a good choice for embedded platforms. It's great for backend server programming where you can have some serious hardware backing it, but I just don't really see it for embedded platforms where resources are scarce and there's a hard limit. I don't really know what I would suggest as a replacement though. C\C++ seem to be the obvious choice, but then you'll have even bigger memory leak issues in apps. Objective-C would probably make it easier to port Jesus Phone apps, but it's highly dynamic nature would bog down the CPU more than is really acceptable on an embedded platform. Scripting languages and Smalltalk are obviously out, since they'd be even less efficient than ObjC. Maybe Eiffel, but then you have the problem of very few people knowing the language and slow uptake on new apps just like there was slow uptake on native OS X apps in the early days when there were very few people who knew anything about ObjC. Giving programmers an API that can be used from multiple languages might work well on a desktop or server, but not an embedded platform. I'd like to see something like C++ with garbage collection that actually works. Java is supposed to have a mark and sweep GC IIRC, but it seems like J2ME, as it's used on the Storm, has almost nothing in the way of GC.

Flash might actually be an interesting choice for a UI. It annoys the bejesus out of me when it's used in a web browser, but it would have a lot of advantages for a embedded platform UI. It's good at all that multimedia crap people drool over, it's certainly quite capable, lots of people out there know how to program for Flash. Performance would be the only real issue, but RIM could potentially work with Adobe on this. It would actually fit quite nicely with Adobe's AIR initiative to use Flash to build desktop apps, and Adobe has been expressing a great deal of interest about getting into the embedded platform market of late. If they could work out some way to really streamline Flash to increase the efficiency so that it wouldn't completely bog down the device's CPU... It would be a most interesting choice IMO.

[yapkuen]

"Let's be real," as the thread title says - some companies find success by leading the market and blazing new trails. Others find success by following the market and sticking with what works. When it comes to OS/UI, RIM has pretty much been in the latter group, even with their newer offerings. If anything, I think the lesson RIM learned from the Storm will be that they tried to stray too far from what they were good at, and instead of going all crazy trying to match the Pre (and failing), they'll probably re-focus on the core functionality that continues to bring people to BlackBerries in the first place and try to just iron out the wrinkles that are still present in the existing Storm OS.

[howardb]

Ok so let me start off with what I want from 5.**. As I said before I think that the phone market is switching to touch screen with a keyboard. I am almost certain that BB will release a phone with this style so first off the UI needs to be more finger friendly. Next, everything really has to be much more smooth and seamless. With processors becoming more and more powerful I dont understand why simply scrolling through text laggs out as soon as a picture appears. With chips like the Nvidia Tegra our phones should be running very smoothly even with several applications running. I hope for a great new UI in 5.** that implements great chips like the Tegra in the new harware.

Tegra in action

Keep in mind the more power you put into a phone the shorter the battery life is going to be.... Also if you believe that the Pre is as good as it was in that presentation you are sorely mistaken. That presentation was probably very carefully tailored and/or scripted so as not to hit any big issues.

[Optimusv2]

I pretty much agree on the assessment that if RIM doesn't do something ambitious, they'll definitely be losing out to competitors in some fashion. It's bound to happen.

Still, a Storm OS version that is a lot more solid than the one they have out now, will still make the Storm a serious player. I've said it before, the Storm is the device that everyone wants to love and is waiting to love. If RIM goes ambitious with their OS or UI, it's going to pay off big time.

What I'd like to see is RIM start getting creative with HOW their UI displays the apps and applications they already have. The card idea used by the Pre was impressive. I say, RIM take inspiration from that idea, but take advantage of their BlackBerry Logo and build a UI interface that works off of some creative implementations of that logo. Have the BlackBerry Logo be what houses and acts as app windows. I could easily see it being amazingly intuitive and uniquely BlackBerry if they did something like that.

[RHChan84]

RIM might lose sales on the Storm but they still have other phones for sale. Storm isn't their only phone. If you don't like the Storm then bring it back for another BB, if you don't like the UI of the Storm then don't go with BB. IMO BB has the best UI, easy but effective.

[Jaysus Cutler6]

I'm still running .75, and in all honesty I'm pretty happy with it. I'd love for the video camera issue to be addressed soon, but I can deal with it for the time being. .75 is the first official OS upgrade, and the Storm runs smoother than other phones do after 3-4 updates. I have no doubt RIM has the OS issue in hand.

[RHChan84]

It's only a matter of time before a lot of these issues will be fixed.

[polorsport]

I can't see a .87 or a .92 doing anything major to this phone. I'm begging to feel like I have another lg voyager on my hands. All hype and no delivery. I don't share the blind devotion that many have to this or any product. BB knew that could rush out a product that wasn't ready because of the lack of competition with Verizon. All the touch screen phones are crap on Verizon. None have the innovation or imagination of the os of apple, google, or now palm.

Before I get the why don't you return it replies. I got a good deal on my phone and am not in a position to switch carriers now. But, I'm getting the feeling of a here we go again scenario with this phone and Verizon being late to the party deal.

[The_Finja]

he way I see it, with the app center coming out early this year. I would expect a lot of the bugs will be worked out by then.

That being said, it is just a phone and a blackberry at that. They are trying to make strides into the phone/toy market, but it is supposed to be a tool first.

I am still running .76 and find it works well, not perfect, but it will come. Just my 2 cents.

[fcortese]

Wrong subforum... You want the Rants and Raves subforum.

For my money, RIM is doing a pretty good job, but then I didn't buy the Storm expecting it to be this magical all-in-one convergence device. I wanted it primarily because of the big beautiful screen (which it more than delivered on), to have some moderate PDA functionality, and to be able to access email on the go. Sometimes I forget to write things down, and I don't realize it until I don't have time to go back and get the info. The Storm has also delivered quite nicely there. Everything else it can do is just gravy to me. I didn't expect it to be a great MP3 player, GPS, game system, camera, or any of that other stuff. The fact that it can do those things if I find myself without is just a nice bonus.

Would it be nice if it could do all of this, and do it with some serious style? Sure, but give me something that gets the job done over something that just looks pretty any day. You can give me the beat up old jalopy car that will get me where I need to go reliably over the shiny new sports car that is in the shop every other week any time. The Storm gets things done, even if it lacks some of the style of other devices.

+1 Bigman, My sentiments to a tee.

[howardb]

The only customers that RIM is going to lose is a portion of the bubble that they've received with the release of the storm. RIM has always been a company that is geared toward the business user. They have put most of their efforts into this area. They aren't trying to go after the flashy wowjit teen like many of the people on this forum seem to be. Its called the racoon factor... Many of you see something new and go oooooh shiny.... Man thats better than what I have.

RIM is known for communications especially centered around email and for utmost stability and plain and simple functionality. This is why the Storm has been a bit painful for them is the thing is very new and they are still learning to be a touch screen company. I just hope that they don't forget their roots and remain a stability business oriented company. From watching most of the updates as of late they all seem to be stability and speed enhancements and not feature additions so that gives me confidence. If the thing pretty much works exactly like it should and looks just like it does I'd be happy. Just get it stable and it can make for a great platform on which others can develop applications. Unfortunately I don't see the Storm ever bringing the appeal to developers to come work on it as compared to the iPhone. The storm is sexy but its still more of a business tool. Where as the iPhone is more of a toy and people then take on toy development projects and get to learn how it works...then they end up moving into bigger and better apps...

[Optimusv2]

I agree with what you say, but that don't forget your roots stuff has led many companies down the path to disaster. You can still be innovative and ambitious without forgetting your base.

Failure to see which way the wind is blowing lands companies in trouble. Back in 2005, I'm quite sure Sony thought it impossible that the Playstation brand would be in the position that it is now against the Microsoft and Nintendo's new offerings. The PS3 was expected to steamroll everything by just about everyone.

Don't underestimate the ability for your core base to find a new home or start looking into other things. This is why RIM has to send messages, like they DEFINITELY intended to do with the Storm that they aren't ignorant to what's out there. The Storm is RIM's way of saying, we've got a few more tricks up our sleeve. They aren't planning on the Storm being some hub for a bit of a bubble. They are planning on it being a trojan horse to a whole new influx of customers. So managing to keep the portion of the bubble they did get and those flashy wowjit teens is a crucial part of their strategy.

If it weren't, the Storm wouldn't exist.