My Storm story...not a rant!

I am a small business owner. I have jumped onto the 'smartphone' bandwagon when I got myself a treo 650. From there, wanting more options to do everything, I bought a treo 700wx. Life was grand. I was one of most organized guys I knew. Everything was smooth, my personal life, and most importantly my work.

I ended up hating the treo because of the touchscreen, I would take it out of my pocket and it would take a minute or so to register the screen input while it was in my pocket....annoying. That and...well...windows was buggy as ****. Last year I jumped on my blackberry bandwagon.

Purchased a pearl, and away I went. Within a few hours, I called up my carrier and asked to upgrade to the curve (going from a full keyboard down to a half was painful). Upgrade commenced. The curve was great, it did everything I wanted, quite well. I twitter, email, gmail, take pictures and send them to flickr, facebook, the works, and although it wasnt super-speedy, it was working great. Over the last couple months, it seemed to realllly slow down. A couple weeks ago, at the birth of our first kid, a daughter, announcing it on facebook almost killed my phone. I uploaded 2 pictures, and changed my status on facebook. The replys came flooding in, each with an email to my blackberry. In an hour, my phone had received about 120 messages through facebook, email and such. My poor phone crawled.

Last week my carrier started carrying the storm, and after playing a lot with my ipod touch, figured this is my next upgrade...faster, bigger, better. My first couple days were painful, it seemed very slow, hard to type, and adding apps was kinda painful. I started reading more crackberry forums, and knew there was a way to fix it. I read one post that told people to suck it up, its a business device, stop downloading all the games and crap and use it for what it is....a business device....I agreed! The next post i read was the post outlining how to speed it up, deleting all the programs that you dont need, turning down the backlight, etc. I did all that, upgraded the os to .148, and here I am about 5 days after happier than heck. My battery life is better, the OS is faster, the keyboard is more responsive....or I am better on it, one of the two. I am now happier than ever. My storm just got about 20 emails in one swoop, and it had no problem crunching them, displaying them and dealing with them...my curve couldnt do that. Me=happy.

I read a lot in the rants/rave section, and that made me wonder if I just sunk some money into something I am going to regret.....I cant see it. Its a business device, not an ipod touch game-boy-wanna-be. The OS upgrade was a big help, but this forums hard workers are what changed it for me to be the best BB I have owned thus far!

Thanks all!

Originally Posted by HackerJL

I am a small business owner. I have jumped onto the 'smartphone' bandwagon when I got myself a treo 650. From there, wanting more options to do everything, I bought a treo 700wx. Life was grand. I was one of most organized guys I knew. Everything was smooth, my personal life, and most importantly my work.

I ended up hating the treo because of the touchscreen, I would take it out of my pocket and it would take a minute or so to register the screen input while it was in my pocket....annoying. That and...well...windows was buggy as ****. Last year I jumped on my blackberry bandwagon.

Purchased a pearl, and away I went. Within a few hours, I called up my carrier and asked to upgrade to the curve (going from a full keyboard down to a half was painful). Upgrade commenced. The curve was great, it did everything I wanted, quite well. I twitter, email, gmail, take pictures and send them to flickr, facebook, the works, and although it wasnt super-speedy, it was working great. Over the last couple months, it seemed to realllly slow down. A couple weeks ago, at the birth of our first kid, a daughter, announcing it on facebook almost killed my phone. I uploaded 2 pictures, and changed my status on facebook. The replys came flooding in, each with an email to my blackberry. In an hour, my phone had received about 120 messages through facebook, email and such. My poor phone crawled.

Last week my carrier started carrying the storm, and after playing a lot with my ipod touch, figured this is my next upgrade...faster, bigger, better. My first couple days were painful, it seemed very slow, hard to type, and adding apps was kinda painful. I started reading more crackberry forums, and knew there was a way to fix it. I read one post that told people to suck it up, its a business device, stop downloading all the games and crap and use it for what it is....a business device....I agreed! The next post i read was the post outlining how to speed it up, deleting all the programs that you dont need, turning down the backlight, etc. I did all that, upgraded the os to .148, and here I am about 5 days after happier than heck. My battery life is better, the OS is faster, the keyboard is more responsive....or I am better on it, one of the two. I am now happier than ever. My storm just got about 20 emails in one swoop, and it had no problem crunching them, displaying them and dealing with them...my curve couldnt do that. Me=happy.

I read a lot in the rants/rave section, and that made me wonder if I just sunk some money into something I am going to regret.....I cant see it. Its a business device, not an ipod touch game-boy-wanna-be. The OS upgrade was a big help, but this forums hard workers are what changed it for me to be the best BB I have owned thus far!

Thanks all!

Good post, but I disagree with your point about the Storm being strictly for business. RIM incorporated too many similarities (touch screen, accelerometer, media player and removable memory) for this phone to be just an upgraded curve or whatever. They saw the business that the iPhone was bringing in as it dominated the smartphone market and they wanted a piece of that so they created the Storm to give it some competition.

basically this is the function of any other blackberry, add a really nice screen and some improved graphics and media capabilities and *poof* you have a storm. no other blackberry can do something that you can't. so if you want to use a blackberry for work, you're getting all of that business function in a nicer looking package. granted that the touch screen won't work for everyone. to each their own.

if you want help fine tuning your device for your personal use, email me and i'll help ya out.

and don't listen to the rants/raves section. it's a very vocal minority trying to represent the entirety of a community of device owners. they don't represent me or any of the other users here. keep this in mind. no news is good news. so think of all the people who AREN'T on here posting. most of us found this place to find out how to fix something that was wrong. very few people joined just to be happy and chipper. there was a purpose. and that purpose was fix a problem. make sense?

Agreed..I will maybe ease into the business side of things before venturing into the personal side of things....I will not hesitate to ask...its a heck of a good community!

good to hear and i agree the storm is a very nice device. it has a learning curve that some master while others dont. glad to see you are a success!

Yeah I agree with you, Howarmat! You must have that basic learning aptitude to go from one phone to another because each one is different in one way or another. Good post overall. Nice story too, I look at my phone with tears in my eyes now lol lmao.

Nice to hear that it really is easy to keep your storm running smooth. I keep reading these complaints and thinking... was i really just THAT lucky that I have a fully functioning storm?