5 reasons to love the Storm 2 over the 1st Storm

It may make a difference in a year when RIM might have a new browser that supports flash...

@jnepsa - In earlier videos, he claimed he didn't have the battery door on and it made that loud sound. :D

@Dave12308
1. Agree with looks. Not that much of an upgrade except rubber buttons on the side and dust won't collect around the sides and buttons on the bottom.

2. Wifi is more useful than downloading videos. If you are a fan of youtube, wifi is about 20x better in quality and loading speed for videos. It will also help with browser speeds like you won't believe. And as for battery life, obviously you wouldn't have it on if you weren't in a wifi hotspot so no battery life issues in the future imo.

3. Extra memory is never a bad thing. They just had to keep up with other phone's speeds so they added this.

4. I use suretype and i am nearly perfect when it comes to it. Never any issues except with lag. I'm using .151 but I type SUPER fast and the phone just can't keep up. This also plays in the new Pieso(sp?) screen technology built into the storm 2 that allows for multiple presses all over the screen. This now opens up a new world for multiCLICK that the storm 1 couldn't handle. (if you haven't watched the video of the pieso technology I HIGHLY recommend it. Fantastic video) I can tell you from experience that in heated debates via email or text, the s1 click interface physically hurts after about a half hour. I had a fight this weekend via text (ya i know:pat:) and I think the only thing fueling it on my end was the bloody screen lag and how hard I had to press to get it to work. The pieso tech. again comes to the rescue as you are no longer physically clicking the screen. You are pressing it and the screen is reacting in a way that makes you think you are clicking. It will no longer be a hassle to type long emails or documents.

5. I assume he was using official OS .148 or .151 for this test but you honestly cannot say that your phone doesn't lag when you do multiple things at once. Earlier today, I had the music player going and was using the BB Browser to search something. If you do this and the page is more than 150k, the device practically freezes for a solid 2 minutes even with perfect service on the 1xev network. More memory and quicker OS's that will most likely only work on the S2 no matter what the BRILLIANT hybrid builders can do. And if the s2 pricing is gonna be anything like the s1, it'll be down to $49 in less than 3 mo.

6. Camera- I agree. same camera, so it just depends on OS build for this. Mine is pretty fast but could definitely take a note or two from the quickshot my g/f has.

Not bashing in anyway my man, just offering a different point of view. Again, I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend that pieso technology video. It was VERY informative and sealed the deal for me getting the new S2. The technology is brilliant and will bring about a new revolution in cellular touch screen devices.

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Originally Posted by Dave12308

Okay, i'm going to be the "Captain Buzzkill" of this thread, and come right out and say it....

After running .191 for a couple of days on my Storm, the S2 DOESN'T impress me all that much after watching this video. And although I appreciate his work in making the video, I must disagree with some of Solomondrin's points. But rather than just post this without explaining, i'll touch on each of his points - so I apologize for the long post.

1) LOOKS - okay, I will admit the smaller screen gap and the blended action buttons look slick. But otherwise, the devices look ALMOST identical. Definitely not enough difference to justify upgrading just for the sake of upgrading. Had they thrown in a higher-res screen, or something like AMOLED display tech, then i'd have been impressed. But overall aesthetics of the 2 devices are actually very similar.

2) WiFi - okay, i'll admit this might be important for some folks. But unless Verizon is going to allow us to make calls over WiFi with no minute useage, I personally can't see the point. All I can see is the battery draining quickly. WiFi on the iPhone? Hell yeah, some of the downloads are >300MB - but the largest file i've downloaded on my Storm was 2MB and that took 1 minute over the EVDO network. Like I said though, these are only my opinions.

3) MEMORY - okay, maybe it's good for bragging rights or something, but >100MB free App memory on a BB seems pointless. On the .151 OS and above, memory management seems good enough that it would be safe to let it drop below 10MB app memory. Right now, I have all the apps and games I could ever wish for installed, and my 4.7.0.151 install is sitting at 42.6MB free. That's 42.6MB not doing a whole lot for me. More memory is always better, but it's not worth the price of an upgrade to me for an extra 90MB or so. The additional 1GB of media storage memory is not all that useful to me, either. I've got an 8GB microSD only halfway full.

4) TEXTING - whole test would have been more telling had he used QWERTY instead of SureType. To be honest, it looks like SureType was doing a poor job on the S1, and working correctly on the S2. All I know is, I never have that much trouble texting on my S1 in QWERTY mode, i've never used SureType on my Storm. And I haven't had any trouble with keyboard lag on any OS .151 and above. Now, people's mileage may vary, but i'm stating my experiences. Perhaps the new click mechanism feels better for extended texting, but i'm sending SMS, not writing a novel. Again, just not worth upgrading for (to me)

5) SPEED - OK, he never said what OSes he was running on the respective devices, all he did was go on and on about how much faster the S2 was, while proceeding to endlessly bash the Storm. And guess what? I didn't really discern much of a difference at all. The S1s transition may have ran slightly slower, but it was a fade transition, and not a box transition like the S2; so it was designed to run slower. For a device that supposedly runs the processor at an overclocked speed, the S2 didn't seem to be faster at all. And regarding his .191 comment, .191 runs slightly slower on the S1 than the earlier builds, due to the flick scrolling. So the S2 would probably run slightly slower on a higher build OS as well. I just honestly don't see the speed difference. So again, not worth the upgrade cost. They should have used the Snapdragon *LOL*

6) CAMERA - on 4.7.0.151; my Storms camera works like his S2s does. His S1 must be running 4.7.0.75 for the camera to be as slow as it is. Mine autofocuses in an instant. Running similar software builds, the camera should be identical between the two, I believe they both use the same camera (as does the Curve 8900). Again, I see nothing upgraded here.


Now, having stated the above; I am in no way bashing either Solomondran or the S2 in general. But i've watched the video with my own eyes, and i'm not impressed. Now, to RIM as a company, the S2 is a necessity. Device refreshes are a way of life for all electronic devices. A new version either comes out, or the device dies off. And to have almost a year between the initial device and the refresh is quite a long time. I only wish they'd have used that time to significantly upgrade the entire hardware platform, not just slap a new screen click mechanism on the same LCD panel, and hook it up to the same basic system board with more memory and a wifi chipset. Mobile processor technology has come a long way in the past year, RIM should have updated the chipset. Still, for a new user coming into the world of the touchscreen BB, the S2 is a no-brainer once it comes out. I just urge everyone who owns a S1 to see what our official 5.0 release brings us, before spending alot of money upgrading. It would be too much like buying a new netbook that comes out strictly because the keyboard and trackpad are better yet the other specs are basically the same.

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nice post...after reading that...i still can't wait for the s2 to drop.:D

I just bought the Tour and love it. But I will be the first to admit that tiny keypads are hard to type on. The speed at which he was texting was pretty impressive to me. I'm not sure if I like the keys serving as two different keys. Perhaps just a matter of getting used to. What impressed me is that there are only 5 keys across the screen like that. How can you go wrong hitting a key that large.

I'll consider switching to the Storm 2 but I have a question I'll bet all you Storm 1 owners can easily answer. Actually, two questions:

1. How do you cursor back to the middle of a word to correct it if I wanted to? With the Tour, I just use the track ball to cursor into a word to fix it. It's easy. Like using a regular mouse.

2. Pretty much the same as the above. How to cursor to a specific area for the purpose of using Select so I can copy and paste?

Do you just drag your finger tip around?

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Originally Posted by Stale Pancake

I just bought the Tour and love it. But I will be the first to admit that tiny keypads are hard to type on. The speed at which he was texting was pretty impressive to me. I'm not sure if I like the keys serving as two different keys. Perhaps just a matter of getting used to. What impressed me is that there are only 5 keys across the screen like that. How can you go wrong hitting a key that large.

I'll consider switching to the Storm 2 but I have a question I'll bet all you Storm 1 owners can easily answer. Actually, two questions:

1. How do you cursor back to the middle of a word to correct it if I wanted to? With the Tour, I just use the track ball to cursor into a word to fix it. It's easy. Like using a regular mouse.

2. Pretty much the same as the above. How to cursor to a specific area for the purpose of using Select so I can copy and paste?

Do you just drag your finger tip around?

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yep pretty much :) just lightly tap your finger on the screen and hold it you will then get an "edit box" that you can drag around to where you wan to go. Much faster process on the tour for sure.

Thanks! Always wondered about that. I'll have to try it out at the verizon store. What OS ships with the Storm 1 these days?

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Originally Posted by Stale Pancake

Thanks! Always wondered about that. I'll have to try it out at the verizon store. What OS ships with the Storm 1 these days?

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.148 is the official release on the phone :)

is that a 5.0 release? I know very little about the Storm, sorry for the questions.

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Originally Posted by Stale Pancake

is that a 5.0 release? I know very little about the Storm, sorry for the questions.

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Sorry should have specified :(

4.7.0.148

Thanks. This is a good time for Blackberry. I've never seen so much great new stuff all at once. Bold, Curve 8900, Tour and a Storm 2 now. All great choices.