Deciding If My BlackBerry Storm Touch Phone Is Worth The Trouble
I am now on my third Blackberry Storm touch screen phone. Â
Generally with technology products like this I like to be an early adopter of version 2.0. Â I am not geeky enough to really want to be the early adopter guy who gladly puts up with buggy software, user interface issues, and other typical problems associated with the first release.
This time however, I needed to get a new phone and the Storm had just come out. Â So I took a chance and got one and became one of the early adopters of the phone. Â You can read my initial review of the Blackberry Storm here. Â And now I am having a classic case of buyers remorse (or as we marketers learned to say, cognitive dissonance).
First Phone was buggy
For all the cool features, the first Blackberry Storm I got had one fatal flaw – it failed to give me meeting reminders. Â This was really surprising to me as this is really core functionality that the Blackberry does well. Â After missing several appointments, I got Verizon to replace the unit.
Replacing the phone was a bit of a chore – once I got through the complaint  process and got them to agree to replace it, it took several days for the phone to arrive, and then required another visit to the Verizon store to have the chips swapped, phone activated and contacts moved over.  Then it was my job to take the original phone to Fed Ex to be returned within the 10 day grace period.  (Note to Verizon Customer Service – make my life easy and take the phone back while I am still in the store.  Don’t make me go on another trip to ship it back to you!)  Total time spent on this: 3 hours.
Second Phone Was Buggy
The second phone they sent me solved the calendar alert issue, but had another twist for me. Â This unit decides to randomly recycle itself and reboot for no apparent reason. Â Not cool at all, especially when I am in the middle of making calls. Â This phone routinely did this during calls with clients, who all empathized but also reminded me to never buy the first release of a technology product. Â Duh.
So, back to the Verizon store I go to repeat the steps I went through the first time. Â Additional time spent: 2 hours (I am getting good at this now and cut the process time down by 33%!).
Third phone……
Well I just got it, and so far so good. Â But the whole thing that gets me is that the Blackberry Storm is supposed to make me MORE productive and right now I have to make up 5 hours of lost time just to break even. Â Hmmm……
I can totally appreciate where you’re coming from with the touch screens. I swore off touch screens after bad experiences with the I Phone…The Blackberry Bold is the best thing that has ever happened to phones. I’m a big fan and so far very few problems.
I just switched to the Storm. Yeah, it’s got some bells and whistles that are pretty nifty, and, oh my, do I look ever so chic toting it around.
My only issue is I could text/email faster than your average 13 year old girl on my old BlackBerry, whereas the Storm is a much slower, more deliberate process due to the touch screen instead of a traditional full QWERTY.
Bascially I’m an early adopter who likes the new “toys” when they come out, but I’m kind of “take it or leave it” with the Storm. Meh.
http://tinyurl.com/cce6dk
Now, i may be biased — iPhone elitist — but check out the above blog post from iPhone Blog (again, biased).
We’re ready when you are 🙂
[…] a bit, all the while not worrying about my online businesses because I could stay connected via my BlackBerry and see how things were going. Â Unlike my brother who has a true brick and mortar storefront, my […]
[…] a bit, all the while not worrying about my online businesses because I could stay connected via my BlackBerry and see how things were going. Â Unlike my brother who has a true brick and mortar storefront, my […]