You should actually BE in such a place rather than watching it on your mobileBlackBerry has hit the American market with the second wave of its “Storm“.  As expected, no signs of this gale are to be seen here. Hence, us poor Indians will probably have to make do with a preview, rather than a full review. The Storm2 9550 has few upgrades over its predecessor, the Storm 9500. Don’t remember that phone? Well, does the name Lewis Hamilton ring a bell? Some popular Storm users are Formula One race driver Lewis Hamilton, as well as web celebrity and amateur comedian Barack Obama.

Anyway, we were talking about the Storm2. Unfortunately, this device hardly has anything new or exciting over its predecessor. That explains my rambling in this paragraph — I’m paid by the word, you see. And oh, if you still haven’t remembered the Storm ad with Hamilton in it, here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Not Just Emails

The Storm2’s specifications sheet is identical to the first Storm. The good thing about this phone is its 3.25” screen. What bugs me however, is its 65k colour limitation. After all, it’s only fair to expect a 16 million colour screen in a ”high-end” phone. In order to make up for this oversight, RIM ’s claimed that it has “Improved the touchscreen experience with a piezo-electric touch feedback system“. This is such a long and fancy term, so I guess there must be some improvement. The device also sports a 3.15 megapixel camera with autofocus capability, as well as an LED flash. It comes with Wi-Fi and inbuilt GPS. Voice navigation is supported by the BlackBerry Maps software. 3G and Bluetooth A2DP support are also present. The Storm2 is equipped with a standard micro-USB port, used for data transfer as well as charging the device. The supported memory card type is micro-SD. It’s quite clear that the Storm2 has almost all the essential features of any self-respecting smartphone.

SweetBerries

That's one sweet-looking picture, but as fake as the government's promises — you'll never get that kind of quality on a 65k colour screenThe device runs on the BlackBerry OS. From what I can tell of the official images available, the menu layout is very neat. An accelerometer is present for automatic screen rotation (and testing your bike’s performance). The media player has a good visual appeal to it. Functionally, it supports the MP4 and WMV formats, which is fair enough. Supported audio formats are MP3, WMA, and AAC. Finally, before I forget, the Storm2 has a 3.5 mm audio jack. This is a wise and welcome move on BlackBerry phones, which now seem to be well on their way to being more media-friendly.

SourBerries

RIM has made a nice attempt to extend its customer base beyond the usual company bosses who do nothing but email and bully their hapless subordinates. It has finally launched a fancy touchscreen device with decent features. However, it’s also missed a few tricks, such as FM radio, Flash support for browsers, and a secondary camera. The phone also looks bulky when compared to other smartphones. It’s rumoured that the Storm2 will cost more than the Nokia N97 Mini, which comes with a touchscreen and a slide-out, full QWERTY keypad. Looks to me like RIM’s latest will have to weather quite a storm to beat the N97 Mini, since the latter has a better screen, camera, browser, and navigation. Furthermore, BlackBerry OS is no match for Symbian OS in terms of user-friendliness. Nevertheless, the Storm2 9550 seems to be a step in the right direction; wherein for the first time the word “BlackBerry” doesn’t mean “fugly” any more.

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