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.