[The_Finja]

Only the people at RIM know what this phone, PDA, is capable of. I use mine every day, all day, I use the calendar, phone, address book and email. For a business tool, I think it works great, it actually surpasses my expectations. As a toy mabey not so much, mostly because of the limitations of apps.

It seems to me that if you are dissappointed with the phone, perhaps we as a group need to check our expectations and stop comparing it to an iphone. It is not an iphone.

That being said, I have never played with an iphone, but I bought a blackberry and I love it, (my wife says too much).

And I'm still running .76, and I already think it's a great phone.

[TheMisses]

Something is wrong here. I like my Storm over other blackberries for the exact opposite reason of this rant.

Entering an appointment. Click calendar, click time, enter info. Much faster than scroll to calendar, scroll to time, scroll through appointment info.

Enter a contact. Click contacts, click add new button, enter info. Not scroll all the way to contacts, bb menu button, scroll to add new contact, enter info.

But then again, since running 90 and 99 I haven't experienced the lag that this guy is talking about.

There indeed appear to be quite some differences between the different versions floating about, both for the 9500 and the 9530. Someone (I think it was sith or CX) said that there are more teams working on the OS. And that the big differences between two Beta's come from the way the source builds are organized. So the .99 you have running on the 9530 might be from a totally different leak (dev group) then our .100 for the 9500 comes from, thus creating massive differences in beta's on top the already self explanatory differences in new beta's. Read both types of threads and you'll be amazed by the differences.

Also, it should of course not happen that my phone behaves one way today and another tomorrow. Whether or not I have my contactlist open in the background, which is about all that's on my phone as "extra" right now ;-)

The same goes for OS installs. Install now and it will behave like this, install again and it will behave like that.

Makes no sense. Something very fundamental is wrong in the core of this OS. At least for the storm platform.
They should have created an entire new OS from scratch. I hope they are working on that.

[fastharry]

I walked into my verizon store yesterday and talked to my salesman who will eventually get my Storm sale.

I was almost ready to pull the trigger, due to the improvemment in hardware. Untill we start tallking and he shakes his head over the storm. He told me that from their experience with brand new storms, some run great out of the box....some they can see after a few inputs during registration that the phone is not right software wise.


They are starting to believe, based on first hand experience, that there is also a harware issue with the phones.....and how the phone phone responds out of the box.....

that would give creedence to what others are saying about the differences between phones. You either get a bad one or a good one. I saw a few bad ones( BRAND NEW) yesterday.....I also saw a saleman running .75, loaded with apps, that ran beautiful.

[TheMisses]

I do think that that will in the end turn out to be the case. Whether they will openly admit it or not.... I don't think so. That might explain too why the .90 didn't run at all on a whole bunch of 9500 devices. There could be a HW malfunction or plainly that a different chip was used somewhere along the line in several production instances, that is being worked with/around in several betas/official releases. It can very well be that that is causing the different behavior. Maybe a batch of third party chips has a production defect which causes the headphone related reboots. There appears to be some link between power fluctuations and reboots/not touch sensitive enough at certain moments etc. This is not something that pops up out of the blue which isn't already being taken into account in early development stages. Even before the first boards are printed for the prototypes this kind of stuff is clear for the guys who are putting the components together and the software development teams. So it would be reasonable to assume that by now, if certain issues are still not resolved and there are not even signs that they are being adressed in any of the beta's, there is something going on on that level. Maybe RIM is just becoming aware of it themselves. Could very well be. Then most certainly they will kick the buttocks of the company providing the bad batch of chips in time, but that does not help us.

Don't get me wrong.... MAYBE it only is the OS that is fubarred for this device but then, well... RIM has taken on too much for them to handle. Touchscreen devices are all around us these days and have been for quite some time. And since they have used code they know like the back of their hands to modify for this device which is in a lot of aspects, apart from the touch screen not so different from the other devices, well.... its just hard to believe that their teams of coders haven't ironed out some of this stuff. I'm guessing the carriers are pressing RIM hard for this. Up to now they have not been able to come up with a solution. And the time and waiting bit..... well, every phone that goes out to the public is going to cost them more than average on support during its lifetime. So every day that goes by that the issues are not resolved cost massive amounts of money for all parties worldwide.

There is much more going on and wrong than we get told.... Oh... we don't get told anything by RIM, except that we need to get used to crappy phones for 600 euros not working flawlessly.

They have absolutely no insight into their devices and the specs of it and/or the software and/or procedures open for the public. AND instead of making an effort to clarify some stuff mr sillyballs takes a pretty agressive stance by saying that beta phones are here to stay. Usually those tactics are used to divert attention from other matters. Could be hardware problems, could be software, could be that they really don't care and are developping at a pretty slow pace. They could hold off on running projects still to come out and divert resources to the fixing of the storm. But that does not seem to be happening either. We just don't know. Other than that some betas are leaked from time to time. Which is cool, because without this platform, crackberry, and the leaks I would have sold the phone already (well..... if my girlfriend wouldn't lynch me for it )

It can easily be so that.... well, lets make a pretty recent comparison: xp sp3... looked at a certain intel driver file, was it there? then it installed the sp but at reboot the system didn't boot. Why? Because there was a totally different CPU and controller in the system then sp3 had "concluded" from only looking at the intel driver file.

Since the devices are made all over the planet with such big differences in performance and hardware/screen issues (although they categorically deny that of course, bunch of weak apes) it is safe to assume that there are very different parts being used of very different quality. Maybe with RIMS consent, maybe not. But I do think that something like this is going on and that they are trying to write code that works around it which isn't up to par yet and thus causes such strange behavior. This is much cheaper than a total recall....

I have been active in the world of game development for a good amount of time and worked with several pretty big companies such as Cryo etc. Also I have worked at HP for more than a fair bit of time in the development support of the NetServer series servers and have seen a lot of things grow and die or grow and prosper. I have no clue on the development process at RIM but that something is wrong hardware wise looks to be pretty obvious.

It is NOT possible for an OS such as .90 to run on one device and not on another exactly the same device. We are talking clean install/reboot issue here. Maybe a fluke could occur at some users and/or devices, but not as how can I put it.... "structurally intermittent" as on the storm.

And you know, if they come clean IF the above is true (which I'm not stating it is, but I am starting to tend to lean that way) then some will leave, others will stay. BUT then they will earn back the trust of the clients, whether they leave or not, but due to mr sillyballs comments many people will look at RIM totally different now... Good remark: beta phone is here to stay.

[fastharry]

well written post, and something I agree with as I have seen it first hand. So the real question becomes, when is the right time to get the phone and allow RIM to get it standardized?...not yet, from what I saw yesterday at the V store...

[TheMisses]

I am waiting for that moment and then send it in for either a repair or an exchange. I don't care, as long as it works and does that to a high standard which you might expect from a 600 euro smartphone/pda. ESPECIALLY since it is closed source code AND only produced by RIM and its partners. Look at Apple, they use the same principle with their PC's and it works... Why can't RIM? If a software update will solve the problem that's also fine by me. But it has to come real fast OR they need to open up to the public or this phone is toast in the marketplace. Actually, it already is when I look at people in my surroundings and their response to the phone. Now, when one tv show gives attention to it, so will others. Then it will definately be a lost case for RIM. Which is sad.... So FIX it YESTERDAY! Growl.... grmbl...

[ouki]

If you are familiar with product development lifecycle, hardware is normally at least a year or two in advanced to its firmware. I can tell you that the Storm hardware is well done and all the issues we are seeing a software related.

[minigts]

...

i doubt we'll be seeing a Storm 2nd Gen.. this one is already perfect imo.

Not even searching to see if there are rumors about a 2nd gen, I can assure you there will be another version. The Sidekick, iPhone and various other phones have updated models of the original. Why would the Storm be different?

Mine personally runs very well as I have just recently updated to .99. I was LOVING .90 except that something was causing the backlight to stay on and there wasn't much I could do to get it to shut off. Tried all the "fixes" and nothing worked. .99 has been good so far, but I'll have to give it more time to see if there are any problems that come up.

The big thing for me is, I don't use some of the features that everyone else uses, like BT and I'm not walking around with mine as an mp3 player, although I do have music and movies on it. So that is one reason why I can say that mine works great, because I may not be utilizing the features that are still buggy with a leaked OS. All the test I did with .90 showed no issues and worked correctly when receiving calls while in a song or movie.

Every OS has gotten better and better and I truly see the OS being to an acceptable standard for official release within the next month or so. It sucks for those still on .75 who aren't interested in trying the beta/leaked stuff, but some are doing just fine where they are.

[bigman2]

If you are familiar with product development lifecycle, hardware is normally at least a year or two in advanced to its firmware. I can tell you that the Storm hardware is well done and all the issues we are seeing a software related.

Except that most people aren't. They don't understand that you have to pin down a hardware specification before the programmers can really do much of anything in the way of creating software to run on it. Or that a software emulator for the hardware spec will only tell you so much, and that at some point you need live hardware to test it on.

I agree with you, based on my only somewhat more than layman understanding of EE and Comp Eng, that overall the Storm hardware seems to be quite well done. There are some inevitable manufacturing defects, but overall things seem pretty good.