Storm: Great expectations unmet

One of the problems caused by the Internet is that consumers and IT journalists usually know about the arrival of a new product long before it becomes available on the local market.

"Bloggers, too, are always several steps ahead in their information gathering," my dear friend Budiputra recently told me, and how right he was.

On the Internet we can read about a product being launched in its home country. If the product has great reviews, we may hold our purchase plan and wait until it becomes available. But, on the other hand, if it is overpromoted, it may backfire because our expectations are too great.

When the BlackBerry Curve 8900, aka BlackBerry Javelin, and the Pearl Flip 8220 were launched in Jakarta, we were aware that the touch screen-based BlackBerry Storm was already available in the United States.

The good news is that the Javelin seems to have been well-received by consumers here. It should be, as it is a great product. The not-so-good news is that we had great expectations for the Storm.

The Storm has a lot of potential, of course. First, it is the first touch-based smartphone that incorporates Research in Motion's (RIM) award-winning SurePress technology. To activate a button on the screen, you place your finger on it and then you press the entire screen panel down. It is very much like the multi-touch glass touchpad on the Unibody MacBook, on which we have to press down to register a click. As I mentioned in one of my past reviews, RIM received a prestigious award from GSM Association during the Mobile Congress in Barcelona earlier this year.

Courtesy of BlackBerry Asia Pacific, I had a couple of days to play around with a Storm around one month ago. The SurePress technology surely impressed me, but whether it is the right technology for an e-mail-centric smartphone is a different question.

The BlackBerrys have of course evolved over the years to include dozens of features and applications. Today, if you have a BlackBerry, you can download applications for news and weather, music and video, social networking and sharing, travel, maps and navigation, and even games.

However, when people buy a BlackBerry, they have two possible reasons. First, people want it as a status symbol, and that is the reason they even go as far as to buy a "black market" BlackBerry in places such as Roxy Mas, Jakarta. Second, people need it because they are heavy email users, and they find the BlackBerry to be the best device to support their business activities. These people usually obtain their BlackBerry and the email service from the operators and their appointed distributors - the way it should actually work.

So, emailing has remained the driving force behind all the BlackBerrys. Now, to create email or to respond to email quickly, nothing beats the real QWERTY keypad like the one found on the other BlackBerrys, on the Nokia Communicator Series, on a growing number of Nokia E-Series, on Palm smartphones, etc.

During my brief test, it became clear that the SurePress approach required some learning. It was not as quick to master as a hardware keypad. I guess, no matter how much time I spend learning to use a touch screen to enter my text I will never be able to do it faster than with a real keypad.

Besides, as is the case with any touch screen-based smartphone, we need to look at the screen to ensure that we are aiming our fingertip at the right virtual button.

I never approve of drivers who enter text while driving, but sometimes we have to send email while doing something else that does not involving putting someone's life at risk.

We may have to SMS someone while reading an email message on our netbook, for example.

One question I asked the RIM executive was why there was no Wi-Fi on the Storm. The answer I got was that the Storm already supports HSDPA and that RIM is more interested in offering more choice to customers.

Wi-Fi is available on the Bold and the other new models.

On the flipside, however, the Storm is a sturdily built smartphone. A little bit on the heavy and bulky side, it also features a sharp display with the four BlackBerry signature buttons still there.

Frankly, my experience with the Storm in handling real-world email did not meet my great expectations. Rumor has it that RIM is now working on a really hot BlackBerry Storm 2, even 3. Let us wait and see how it will meet our raising expectations. In the meantime, I think BlackBerry Bold is still the best BlackBerry of all.