BlackBerry Storm 9500

The Storm is here and while I’m sure you're anxious to know how it fared. We were too. So it took us a little while to get through with testing and here’s what we have to say.

source:Technology News

Form Factor
The 9500’s build quality exudes a certain sturdiness with slim chromed lines and who can miss that brilliant 3.5-inch SurePress touchscreen display that is anything but conventional and clearly visible even in broad daylight. It sports a resolution of 360 x 480 (184ppi) pixels and 65k colors with an accelerometer for screen rotation. Though it's 3G ready, video calling might be a bit of a problem considering there’s no secondary camera. The 3.2 megapixel AF camera comes with a single LED for a flash and is located at the back.

On one side of this slim device (that we thought to be a lot thicker from the previews) is a 3.5mm standard earphones socket, volume keys and a dedicated camera key. A customizable key that’s usually set to Voice Command is located on the other side with a micro USB port. Even though there seemed to be plenty of place for a hot swap slot, the Storm, like all other BlackBerry devices has its microSD card slot located under the rear panel (1GB card included with support for up to 16GB). It seems that RIM just refuses to do it any other way. Below the display are the traditional BlackBerry menu and Escape keys in between the call take (also used to access the dial pad) and the call end keys.

It’s a bit on the heavy side though (155g) and if you shake it, you actually hear the display move. There’s also a slight visible gap all around the screen. I’m not entirely sure how we feel about that. Nevertheless it’s still a good looking piece of hardware.