So I wanted to post my impression on the storm. I am a fairly new Blackberry user honestly. I got a world edition a couple years back with Verizon, and then upgraded to the pearl the day it came out. Great devices, but they had their issues. Using instant messenger programs like beejive, yahoo, or AIM was always a huge drain on the battery (as in just having the program on drained the battery). On the pearl, the phone would often crash and need a battery pull after ending calls from time to time (never figured that one out). Despite the problems, blackberries are amazing for sending texts, emails... something I now feel the storm does equally as well.
Despite the seemingly constant negative posts of problems here, I decided to buy a storm. I was up for the yearly upgrade, and wanted something a little more fun. I made the purchase 3 weeks ago, and have had it now for about 11 days. First thing I did was tweak the settings to how I like them, and then put programs all in folders (someone made a great post about that - and boy did it speed up navigation). Since then, I've had almost no issue with the phone. Maybe I have a "good" storm, but the hardware seems solid, as does the software. The best part is the typing aspect - something I was worried about. I have pretty big fingers, and as a result, can't type on the iphone at all. As for the storm, after forcing myself to type email after email, I've gotten as fast as I was on the pearl, and nearly as fast as I was on the world edition. The iphone or any other touch screen I've ever used does not compare. Once your fingers get used to where the buttons are on the screen, its a breeze.
Other highlights:
-Browser is vastly improved and runs very fast on Verizon's network
-Music/Video Player had a nice upgrade, and works well
-Operating System in general seems to be faster and more responsive than on the pearl and world edition / not sure how it stacks up to the bold and curve
-Tons of people who I've let play with the phone have been very impressed
Now the problems - I'll admit, there IS a little lag from time to time when switching from landscape to portrait modes, but to me its not a huge issue. I compared it to a friend's iphone, and really it was just about as fast, we're talking maybe 1/2 second difference. You're not going to do much in 1/2 a second on either device. As far as crashing issues - Last night, I made the first battery pull on the device. I believe third party software was to blame. I downloaded vlingo, which after doing the steps set out in a previous post, worked fine for a little bit, but crashed the phone several times. But that was to be expected - its technically not compatible with the storm yet - so the fact I was even able to use it a little bit was still impressive. Its not removed on my device until an update comes out.
Other issues:
-Instant messenger software quickly drains the battery
-Video/Picture camera is slow (if you want good photos, buy a real camera)
-Very little third party software (I know, its coming, eventually)
-Call quality isn't great (easily fixed by putting phone in speaker mode or wearing headphones)
Just my 10 cents on it all.