I know there are a lot of Blackberry fans. Frankly, that’s why I chose the Storm. I didn’t want an iPhone because AT&T coverage in rural Indiana is terrible. So I figured for Verizon, the Blackberry brand plus the Storm’s supposed openness to third party apps, would be the closest thing to something iPhoney.
I’ve been highly disappointed. If more than 2 or 3 apps are open, it’s like Windows 3.1 on a 386 PC. If I have the GPS on, and someone calls me, it takes so long to open the “phone app,” that the person is long gone. I watch the little clock spinning ’round knowing the caller is heading for voice mail. If I lock the phone, so it doesn’t open apps from touching my leg when it’s in my pocket, it takes like 20 seconds to “unlock.”
So here is Blackberry Storm Wish List for January 25, 2009.
1. An “open app” app. My previous phone was the Motorola Q. It was horrible, but, it had the ability to see which apps were running, and “kill” them. When the Storm starts slowing down, I have to basically open every app to see if it’s running, then close them.
2. A configurable POP3 email system that does not pull down every email all day long, that lets me just check emails when I’m out. If I configure my email account, it is either Pull Them All Down or remove the email account from my Storm. Since I get over 200 spams a day that I filter in Outlook, they just build up on my Storm. Crazy.
3. A “Check Voice Mail” button on the main screen.
4. The ability to add a button on the main screen for people I call most – like a super-speed-dial.
5. After writing (3) and (4), how about just the ability to make a button for any function or set of functions, like a macro?
6. The ability to sync my Outlook contacts, but filter to include only those contacts with phone numbers. I have hundreds of email contacts, only a couple dozen with phone numbers. Yet I must scroll through the hundreds in my Storm Contacts to get to the few that I call. While I’m at it, a more configurable sync would be nice, as I deleted hundreds of contacts on my Storm, and they all showed back up after a sync. Stupid on my part, but could have been avoided with more options.
7. A browser that has Flash. I mean, it’s 2009. Come on, it’s time someone comes up with a decent fully-functional mobile browser. “Hey, look at my Storm! No, it doesn’t play YouTube videos. No, it doesn’t work with 90% of the cool video sites. Yeah, it’s really hard to get video on here, and music’s not so easy either. What? You’re not going to get one? Why not?”
8. Games. There were two crappy ones included, and anything I find online either isn’t compatible with the Storm, or is suspect in it’s compatibility. And where is the button to an online app store? I heard it was coming, but don’t see it yet.
Bonus: One other irritant is how the touch screen lets your face “touch” buttons during a call. You have to either keep your face away from the phone, or risk it putting the phone into speaker mode (about half my calls), muting the phone (most of the rest), or any other button. Either the buttons need to be made smaller (they’re perfectly sized for cheek-activation), or the screen needs to be frozen during a call.
Maybe there are solutions available. I just can’t find them. But I’m hopeful! Being a habitual early adopter, I’ve gotten used to the early crap. But I’m getting impatient, especially because while writing this my Storm froze up trying to download the Weatherbug app. Time to take the battery out again…