So here it is, the much awaited Palm Pre.   Dr. Phone and Dr. Wreck have been following the handset industry from the days of the so cool Zack Morris brick phone (which we were happy to see once again appear on a recent episode of Jimmy Fallon) to the astronomically popular Motorola Razr, all the way through the Apple iPhone.  Its not even hyperbole to say that at no time ever has one single phone meant more to a company than the Pre does to Palm.  With the Research In Motion branded Blackberry redefining the smart phone by its Pearl, Curve, Bold and Storm entries, and Apple setting the gold standard for all smart phones by its introduction into the market with the iPhone, the Sunnyvale, CA based Palm had become a distant afterthought.  For years the company struggled along rumors of being bought out or broken apart culminating with the stock price reaching an all time low of $1.42 in December of 2008.   But then, with the announcement and demo of the Pre at the January 2009 CES in Las Vegas, the company built back enough momentum to inject energy into the Palm brand.   The phoneWreck team has been waiting anxiously to review the Pre and promises to break down every nook and cranny of this monumental phone.  As always, we will call it like we see it, and promise to pull no punches so enough of this nostalgia already and in the words of the immortal Michael Buffer, “LETS GET READY TO RUMBBBBBLE!!”  Ding. Ding.

Palm Pre Review

We pay homage to the great Clint Eastwood in this review by going through “Il buono, Il brutto, Il cattivo” for those of you who don’t parlarano italiano that means “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”

This phone was filled with plenty of Goods but also some Bad’s and Ugly’s. At times while reviewing the phone it almost seemed like a phone that didn’t have too much middle ground.

The Goods

Oh where to start?

First lets start with the looks and form factor of the phone.  Image is everything and this phone does not disappoint.  The phone has very sleek curved lines and a glossy look to it.  Mrs. Phone also pointed out that the backside when slid up has a nice little mirror for taking pictures, or doing your hair while talking on the speaker phone and driving!!! (and some of you wonder how we got the name phoneWreck, sigh).  Dr. Phone always likes to judge how good a phone looks by how many double takes he gets when walking into a club while pretending to talk on his brand new phone, and of course Mrs. Phone isn’t around.

Double-Take Rating**: 8 Double Takes Out of 10!!*

* Note this number may vary based on alcohol consumption, lighting, and other factors.

**Scale – Dr. Phone normally gets 0 double takes from 10 women so this is purely the phone and only the phone

Mrs. Phone's favourite phone mirror!

Additionally, as stated in the hardware review, the phone fits into your hand nicely, both its weight and width make it easy to slide into your pocket.

So the thing that was most surprising to the team at phoneWreck was the Touch Screen.

Most other models we have reviewed or torn apart (Omnia, HTC Touch Pro, Krave) use “resistive touch” which means you physically have to press on the screen in order for it to recognize your finger.  Other phones we reviewed like the Storm or iPhone use capacitive sensing algorithms which sense when your finger actually touches the screen and are much easier to use.   Still, as we mentioned in the Storm review we found the touch to be slow, the touch sensitivity not accurate, and no capabilities to press on multiple points in the screen at the same time.  The Palm AMAZED us with its accurate and easy to use multi-touch ability.  Kudos to them for getting it right finally!  We are not saying this is the holy grail of touch screens but is a 10x improvement over Storm/iPhone and 100x over Omnia and resistive touch.

Without showing a video of some of the very cool things you can do with the touch like expanding, condensing photos (or even maps on Google, or web pages) with two finger gesturing, you will not be able to fully grasp how cool this feature is!  Below are charts from the instruction manual on the gesturing just so you have an idea:

Touch-Screen Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Screen Review:

This is a difficult one to review.  The Bold, Storm, iPhone, Pre all have very comparable HVGA (320×480) HVGA 24-bit color screens.  The Pre screen size is at a very decent 3.1 inches and is made by Sony.  The screen looks amazing, and backlight is very bright so the image really shines off of the phone.  Dr. Phone is not a videophile but likes this screen a lot.

Screen Rating: 9 out of 10

Other cool features:

The internal accelerometer senses when you flip the screen to panorama, and 180 degrees so it changes the images in photo, web browser, main screen, etc….   Seeing that the movie Bruno is coming out very soon starring Sacha Baron Cohen, we thought we’d do a little Borat and say VERY NICE!!!

The phone when connected through USB is recognized automatically by iTunes so if this is your method of choice to transfer music (its not ours) you can use this utility.

Cut and Paste!!! (Apple took almost 2 years to release this for iPhone).

3.5mm headphone jack, it sounds cheesy but some phones don’t even support a standard headphone jack but its good to see has one does without doing some proprietary headphone rip-off scheme.

Internet Browser:

The Blackberry browser has been much maligned in reviews, but we chose to use the Blackberry Bold browser since it was easy to configure in WiFi and Over the Air in both Java and non-Java modes. We hear that the Palm browser is based off Webkit which also powers the Safari browser on the iPhone and on PCs.  Aesthetically speaking the Palm browser formatted images much better and pages looked far superior to that of the Bold.  In addition the brilliant touch adds a lot of pros here by being able to scroll much easier and zoom in and out with ease.  The quick refresh and back button are a nice feature and in order to enter in your next address you begin typing on the keyboard and that’s it.   Unlike the iPhone, you get to see the entire screen while you are typing in the next webpage.   Palm has really made a nice browser here.

Lets take a look at the speeds using three of the phoneWreck’s team favorite sites and each companies respective sites.

Browser Loading Benchmarking:

Bold Browser: 4.6.0.167

Pre Browser: 1.0.2

Using WiFi:

Clearly the WiFi browsing on the Palm Pre is not only better looking but faster as well.   Java scripts are running much better on the Palm Pre.

Network Browsing:

Okay so this one we know that the browser on the Pre is faster but we wanted to see how the Sprint EV-DO Rev. A (DORA) network stacked up against the AT&T 3G WCDMA Network:

The above numbers tell an interesting story.  It seems that the Sprint DORA network is slowing down the loading of pages on Pre, but by very little margin over the WiFi which means it is closely matching the internet speed at the phoneWreck lab.  On the other hand the Bold WiFi numbers closely match the numbers of the AT&T 3G network which indicates the browser formatting is probably what is the bottleneck in loading pages, not data acquisition.

This round goes to the Pre without question!!!  The inaugural phoneWreck Kelly Slater internet surfing trophy goes to the Palm Pre.  Surfs up bro.

Internet Surfing Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Camera Review:

Its hard to really compare against some of the super high-end camera phones that are coming out with 8.1 MP cameras but it should be fair to compare against similar type phone like Bold/Storm/iPhone.  The Pre (1520×2032) is capable of higher resolution pictures than the Bold (1200×1600) and is roughly similar to that of the Storm (1536×2048).

Below is a comparison of images between the Bold and Pre:

BlackBerry Bold

Palm Pre

BlackBerry Bold

PalmPre

The above pictures really show the Pre having a more colorful, vibrant and sharper image.  The good thing about the Bold is the fact that it allows you to choose between resolutions, effects, and specific types of flash modes, where as the Pre only gives you control over the flash.   The Pre however makes you feel like you can take pictures as fast as your finger presses the button, which is a great feature and a testament to how fast the image processing is working on the Pre..

Camera Rating:  8.5 out of 10

Operating System Review:

The much talked about webOS!  This operating system is unique and yet probably the closest thing you will see to a PC’s operating system in the sense that it lets you keep as many applications open as the Operating System can handle and as many web browsers as you’d like.  The people at Palm call an open application a “card” for the cool way that it appears on the main screen.  We tried to push the Palm Pre to the limit to see how many cards (applications) we could have open at the same time without slowing down the OS.  We got up 16 (1 YouTube,1 Google Maps, 2 Telephone Prompts, 3 Webpages, 1 video camera mode, 2 camera modes, 1 calculator, 1 notepad, 1 task taker, 1 world clock, 1 calendar, and 1 e-mail) before we quit because the OS still did not slow down.  Very impressive! The ease of switching between the apps is the swipe of a finger left or right, and the ability to close an app is about as simple as swiping your finger up, to fling the app off the screen!!  The webOS is perfect for multitasking is probably the single largest advancement over ANY phone in the market today. Superb job of really understanding how to make an OS easy to use, and to allow users to flip between their favorite applications rather than closing one down and having to open another.   The OS from our time playing with it seemed to be very stable and bug free.

webOS Rating:  10 out of 10!!!!

The Bads

There are so many items on this phone that show that Palm really took their time, with prepared, well thought out features that it was surprising to see so many things that made the phoneWreck team scratch their head.  This phone really appeals to the consumer market and we understand that, but Palm’s core audience has always been the business user as well, which we think they may have turned off with a couple of key features.

The slider button on the top of the phone for muting for instance, is something that is hard to slide especially in the middle of a conference call or in a split instance if you need to talk to someone else.  Why not use a simple push button like the Blackberries.

The speaker, and speaker phone are sub-par.   The Bold really became the phone to beat here, but the Pre doesn’t compete against a Curve, or even and iPhone with its speaker phone.   Not to mention the speaker design on the back looks like its straight out of an 1980’s tape player.

We commend Palm for putting a keyboard on the Pre unlike the iPhone.  The touch screen is so good you could easily get away with using a touch keyboard on the Pre, however it would take away from the ability of viewing the entire screen.  Having said that, the keyboard is way below average comparing it to other keyboards on the market.  Once again Blackberries set the bar high on keyboards, but Palm’s choice to keep their old Centro/Treo keyboard was not a wise move.  The keys feel really slippery, don’t depress much and are very close together.  A nightmare for Dr. Phone who suffers from FFS, and no that’s not a fatal disease, its Fat Finger Syndrome!

Its U.S Open time for Golf so we wanted to type the following sentence in both the Bold and Pre and compare time and errors:

“Unlike Thursday, Friday offered no rain. And by the time the first 78 players had finished the first round, the sun came out and offered up a nice day on a still-saturated course, Tiger Woods who played seven holes of the first round in Thursday’s rain and shot an opening-round 74, tried to downplay the effect of the tee times. But it was clear afterward that those in his predicament got the worst of the situation.”

The above was typed three times on each device and an average was calculated.   The above contains multiple numbers, capitalizations and punctuations which also needed to be correct, as if I was a business user typing an important e-mail to a CEO.

In addition to making over two times the amount of errors Dr. Phone typed almost two times slower.  The keyboard could certainly be easier to use.

Keyboard Rating:  6 out of 10 (we give credit for at least having one)

The Uglys

USB Sideloading

The phoneWreck readers are very intelligent, but we believe everything on the Pre phone should be consistent with its OS and Web Browsing and simple to use.  That’s why we were surprised to plug in the phone to the USB port on our computer (note without iTunes) and see the below:

Luckily, because of Dr. Wreck’s teardown review we now realize the OMAP 3430 is handling the High-Speed USB (hardly fast as you will see).  The average user might go cross-eyed seeing the above.  We expected to plug in the phone and have it look like a thumb drive.  The Bold phone does this and were surprised not to see this easy option on the Pre right away.  Okay so we eventually figured out that we needed to download the “Palm Data Transfer Assistant” to move our music and movie files in “USB Drive” mode.  We think this should have been plug n’ play but we can let that go aside.  The next thing that took us by surprise is that you cannot use the phone while you transfer your movies and music files to the Pre!!!!!  The phone turns off and shows that you are in USB mode.  Neither the Bold, iPhone or Storm do this, why the Pre?!    In addition, we decided to transfer one large 1.4 GB movie file to the Pre and found that it took nearly 12 minutes.   So, before I travel I always transfer at least two movie files onto my Bold so I can play them on my plane ride.  This would take nearly 25 minutes, and 25 minutes which I can’t talk or text to my friends.  Dr. Phone’s 16 year old nephew is texting and talking constantly, he would go nuts if he couldn’t use his phone for 25 minutes, as I practically did..  Here is a side by side comparison of the Pre vs. Bold on Sideloading:

The Bold would take 3 minutes to transfer 2 movies versus 24 minutes for the Pre and You can talk on the phone and transfers files fast at the same time with the Bold, this is the way it supposed to be, a definite oversight on the Pre, especially as a multimedia smart phone!

USB Sideloading Rating: 3 out of 10 (At least it has HSUSB, that’s all we can say)

Mechanical Design

The slider mechanism is not very stable, and looks as if it could be very easily broken.  When we were first trying to get our hands on the Pre we went by several Sprint stores who had to remove the Pre displays because people and we quote “Slid the phone too much and  broke the slider.”  This is a very expensive phone, it is almost inexcusable to not have a tight sliding mechanism like the T-Mobile G1, or the Sony Xperia.  The USB mini A/B port cover also fell off Dr. Phone’s Pre after using it three times.  Mechanical design must be more robust!!

Durability Rating (as mentioned in Review Part 2):  5 out of 10

Battery Charging

Battery charging from a dead battery situation is a nightmare.  I pity anyone who is on an important call and their battery goes 100% dead because it took us almost 10-15 minutes to get this thing back from a dead battery using the wall charger.  It charges relatively quickly when the battery is not dead, and standby battery life is not to shabby at all, but the dead battery situation is a catastrophe.

Battery Charger Rating: 4 out of 10

Summary:

The phoneWreck team prides themselves on testing every phone to their limits and not giving “soft reviews” We really took this thing to the limit and we believe it actually lives up to its hype which is a hard thing to do!  This phone took several major steps forward both with the brilliant touch screen and the amazing webOS.  There was some drawbacks that like we said made us scratch our head, like the keyboard, speaker phone, USB sideloading, and mechanical design.  You’d think for a phone that holds the companies fate in their hands they would try their best to get everything perfect and not make simple correctable errors.   They spent so much time on the OS, and other features why not go out of the way to build in a nice keyboard, better audio codecs, faster USB, robust mechnical design and battery charging. Some of these items could turn off one of Palm’s core demographics – business users. We absolutely don’t want to let these negatives get in the way of an absolutely revolutionary phone.   Our numerous positives far outweigh the negatives. If you get the chance to get one on the Sprint Network please do it!! You won’t regret any dime you spent and you will love this phone.  Great work Palm, and we think your company will be fine!

Thanks for reading the review, we appreciate your support everyone, please feel free to  leave a comment.

Keep on Wrecking phone lovers!!!

Overall Rating:  9 “Pre cards” out of 10

Make sure to check out the other Palm Pre Reviews! Also, subscribe to our RSS and follow Dr.Wreck’s twitter!

If you haven’t had a chance yet, make sure to check out our Sprint Palm Pre design analysis! Check out the UI Review!

Note: Most images are courtesy of www.ifixit.com

Here it is, the phone we’ve been ramping up for since it was first unveiled earlier this year.

This puppy has been touted by many as the venerable iPhone killer. Here at phonewreck, we’ll be taking this thing through it’s paces over the weekend and the next few days in order to give you, our readers a proper review that includes benchmarks for all of the functions this device can perform.

Make sure and keep it locked on www.phonewreck.com as we continue to put our Palm Pre from Sprint under the wrecking ball.

Fortunately for you guys, we had a chance to work with the gentlemen/women over at ifixit to get some high quality images of the PCB. These people  really have their stuff together and resorted at nothing to be the first with a fully documented teardown of both the pre and the pre touchstone charger.

Anyways, enough rambling from us – we know why you guys are here. Time to get our hands dirty and see what makes the pre hummmmmmmmm.

Oh and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS to keep posted as the updates come!

There are some pretty interesting things that popped up on the Pre’s PCB’s. This is the first production device we’ve seen on the OMAP3 (Open Media Applications Processor) platform. OMAP3 is powered by the 600MHZ ARM Cortex A8, PowerVR SGX 530 (GPU), 430MHz C64x, DSP and ISP (Image Signal Processor) and was clearly designed to pack a punch – Dr. Wreck thinks we’re going to see this processor popping up in future netbook endeavours.

On the connections side we see the usual wifi/bluetooth combo going to Marvell and CSR with the W8686 and 63823 respectively. We also see the BaseBand win going to Qualcomm with the heavily integrated MSM6801A platform. The OMAP3 PMIC comes loaded with a USB tranceiver and Audio codec which even further reduces the overall board density of this device. We’re not fully sure – but it looks as if the Pre’s cool new multi-touch Touch Screen Controller win went to Cypress Semiconductor with the CP6944BA device.

The device packs a 1150mAh battery – just like the iPhone 3G.

More Info after the Break!

On the top of the communications board we can spot the BaseBand Processor (Qualcomm MSM6801A), SDRAM, RF power amp and Duplexer by TriQuint.

On the bottom of the communications board we can spot the BaseBand PMIC (Maxim MAX8695Q), RF Transmitter (RFT6150) and the RF Tranceiver (RFR6500) both by Qualcomm.

On the main logic board, we see the OMAP3 PMIC – the Texas Instruments TWL5030. As mentioned before, this PMIC is packed with a USB Traceiver as well as Audio Codec. We also see the Bluetooth and Wifi Tranceivers with the earlier discussed wins from both Marvell and CSR. This device contains a microUSB port and 8GB of internal memory from Samsung.

Elpida offers up some mobile DDR memory and is stacked on top of the venerable OMAP3 processor. We’ll have to wait and see how this thing benchmarks.

And there you have it! Thanks again to ifixit for the wonderful teardown scans and images. Make sure and pop over there if you want to see how they took it apart!

Keep posted as we plan on continually releasing Palm Pre content over the next week!

Until next time, Keep WRECKING and make sure to grab our RSS and follow Dr.Wreck on Twitter! Also be sure to check out our Palm Pre Design analysis or UI review!

]]> http://www.phonewreck.com/2009/06/07/palm-pre-teardown-and-analysis-review-coming-soon/feed/ 47 http://www.phonewreck.com/2008/12/03/in-depth-comparison-blackberry-bold-vs-blackberry-storm/ http://www.phonewreck.com/2008/12/03/in-depth-comparison-blackberry-bold-vs-blackberry-storm/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:30:27 +0000 Dr. Phone http://www.phonewreck.com/?p=84

Since the BlackBerry Storm just came out, we thought it’d be necessary to stack the Storm against its main rival on the enterprise side: the BlackBerry Bold. On the outlook, the functions of the device are similar, although the BlackBerry Storm has a vastly different way of navigating than its larger brother. Furthermore, they’re offered on different networks, meaning different chips, different speeds, and even a different customer base.

So what does each device have to boast about? Read on!

Each chart in this post provides a relatively objective comparison between the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Storm. A green highlight indicates that the function executed particularly well, while a red highlight indicates that the function lacks in comparison. White indicates that it is on par with competition and is acceptable.

Technical Specifications

First up, we compare the actual specifications from the two phones. It’s surprising how much is integrated nowadays, as the capabilities of the Storm (on paper) stack up nicely to the larger and fatter Bold. Check these out below:

The exclusion of Wi-Fi on the Storm was designed out from the beginning, so it is very likely that given the circumstances, the Storm’s form factor (and the size of the PCB) could be capable of integrating Wi-Fi. The Storm is able to keep a slimmer profile due to the integration of GPS, audio codecs, high-speed USB, and graphical capabilities in one single processor, the Qualcomm MSM7600. On the Bold (teardown), each of these are separate ICs – SiRF, Wolfson, Cypress for the GPS, audio, and high-speed USB respectively.

The MSM7600 has interfaces that support CDMA2000/1xEV-DO as well as HSDPA/EDGE/GRPS/GSM, has a 400MHz ARM11 Apps Processor, a 274MH ARM9 Baseband Processor, and two high performance DSPs. Unfortunately, as this is their first implementation, and RIM’s first graphic-intensive device, the launch firmware and integration came up a little short. Most elements requiring the intensive processor capabilities, proved to be frustrating to use, and nigh unusable. The latest firmware (unofficial, but much improved) provided many improvements to the accelerometer, browser, navigation, and general bug fixes. We do think this processor is capable; however, we believe that there is too much for this one processor to handle.

Browser

BlackBerry Bold: Browser 4.6.0
BlackBerry Storm: Browser 4.7.0

In this section we compare the browsers of each phone. The BlackBerry Storm generally fared very well, with many improvements to speed, a more intuitive scrolling than the cursor in the Bold, and a large screen to boot. However, most formatting issues from the Bold still exist in the Storm. In some cases, like the media-intensive Gametrailers, the Storm was actually a step down in formatting from the Bold.

We’ve posted various websites, in order of increasing bandwidth usage.  Note: this chart depends heavily on network availability and coverage – so take these statistics lightly.  We made sure we had really good connections, but of course, speed varies heavily depending on your location.  Update: We’ve split these tests into Javascript-enabled, and Javascript-disabled.  Caches were cleared when performing these tests.  And the Engadget site is the full site, not the mobile version.

It’s also important to note that, while the Storm has many improvements over the Bold, browsing is not up to par with its competitors.  Browsing on the Storm is generally pleasant, but we really believe that RIM needs to redo their entire browser rather than improving upon it.  Perhaps a WebKit development is in order, similar to its Safari and Chrome-lite competitors.

Update!! So it appears the Storm’s browser’s default settings turn off Javascript support, where as it supports it by default on the Bold.  Running Javascript does slow down these numbers a lot, which accounts for the differences between the Bold and the Storm.  We’ve updated the numbers above.  We apologize for the wrongful comparison.  But the comment remains: with Safari and Chrome-lite-ish blazing through Javascript, BlackBerry definitely needs an upgrade to its browser.

Sideloading

This section compares the sideloading performance of each phone. We found this section particularly important, because media content nowadays are increasing both in quality and in density. In the most recent iterations of BlackBerry, we found that dragging and dropping music albums, tv shows, and movies were particularly fast, which was good for porting content on the go. So, following a recent EE Times article comparing the Bold and other recent phones, we decided to do our own comparison of the Bold and the Storm comparing USB transfer times.

BlackBerrys were traditionally fast at sideloading, but with a whole new chipset and architecture, I believe RIM kept the Storm to the processor’s integrated solution. Unfortunately, their performance slowed down dramatically from past BlackBerry devices. This is unfortunate, since before, it was easy to keep BlackBerrys plugged into the computer for charging and loading purposes. Now, to transfer a movie, it was actually painful waiting for a movie or even a music album to transfer.

Camera

The cameras made it tough to determine a winner. The chart below illustrates this problem.

On one hand the BlackBerry Bold was quick and simple to use. Even under low light situations, the Bold took quick snaps of whatever was in front. On the other hand, the 2.0MP camera is limited, doesn’t have strong image processing capabilities, and is very susceptible to graininess under low light. The Storm on the other hand produces relatively decent pictures, even under low light. It has some sort of focusing mechanism even though none of its offficial specifications seem to list it. However, this focusing mechanism causes the picture taking to be insanely slow. If you wanted to ever “catch the moment”, you’d definitely miss the moment using the Storm. Granted, the moment afterwards would look pretty good.

Media Playback

The media playback capabilities have improved dramatically with each revision of BlackBerrys. Each sport a 3.5mm headset jack (unlike other smartphones) and have speakers that are decently loud when sharing a YouTube video with friends.

Nothing really beats the Bold in terms of sheer volume. It even sounds decent at loud volumes, without too much distortion. The Storm’s speakers on the other hand, are moderately loud, but sound like the treble on the equalizer has been maxed. There’s no mid or low-end sound coming out, which is rather disappointing. Also, the speaker placements on the Storm seem to be in an area where my middle fingers are constantly covering in landscape mode.

Finally the visuals. The Bold’s screen, while small, is stunning. It sports a high pixel density on the small screen, while the Storm’s screen uses the same pixel density, but on a larger screen. As a result, the Storm’s screen is not as piercing sharp, and the contrast ratio doesn’t appear to be as strong. However, the experience is definitely much more pleasurable with the larger viewing area.

Typing

BlackBerry’s are typically the best for typing. In traditional RIM fare, they harped on the unresponsiveness of touchscreens and the lack of tactile feedback. As such, they delayed entry until a viable solution was provided. So how does the typing actually stack up? Without beating around the bush, we know that typing is slowed on the Storm due to its lack of multi-touch integration. However, in this section, in an attempt to provide some objective results, we try to give our best shot at guessing what the fastest speed a user can potentially get at.

For each device, we timed how long it would take us to type out a paragraph from one of CNN’s latest posts. There are a lot of them, so we tried to find one relevent: Obama and his BlackBerry. The paragraph is as follows:

Before he ran for president Barack Obama quit smoking. Now that he’s won the job, he may have to break another addiction: Checking his BlackBerry for e-mail.

The president’s e-mail can be subpoenaed by Congress and courts and may be subject to public records laws, so if a president doesn’t want his e-mail public, he shouldn’t e-mail, experts said. And there may be security issues about carrying around trackable cell phones.

In order to simulate typing in a real world situation, we memorized the paragraph to mimic the situation where the user knows what he/she is going to type. Furthermore, we simulated a professional environment, keeping punctuation in mind. Of course, being heavy BlackBerry users and typers, we utilized most default auto-correct words, and we knew where every symbol placement was.

At our optimal speed, using full knowledge of default auto-correct and symbol placements, we were able to obtain 38.8 words per minute on the BlackBerry Bold. There were a couple mistakes not caught by the auto-correct function, however by reading the sentence in context, you could make out the mistakes.

On the BlackBerry Storm, typing slowed down to 26.7 words per minute at the optimal speed. We emphasize the word optimal, because the Storm took an excess amount of concentration, thumb effort, and rhythm — way more than the Bold. We were able to type faster than the processor could handle many times, as we saw the light lag behind the thumbs. Furthermore, the symbol/numerical button also lagged, requiring us to wait for it to transition menus. This transition period caused a few errors due to anticipation of the keys. Also, while the auto-correct function worked hard to keep my words looking good, there were many more words that were nigh unrecognizable. It didn’t even correct “gor” into “for”.

Ultimately, as stated in my review, the BlackBerry Storm goes against what BlackBerry’s initially stood for: efficiency and effectiveness. We could type relatively fast (26.7 wpm is pretty good, in our opinion), but it required so much effort and focus to keep the rhythm going. In fact, we’re exhausted from typing an e-mail. Furthermore, the processor is barely able to handle that typing speed. I could see the highlights trailing behind my thumbs, and the symbol/numeric button and keyboard transitions delay any typing whatsoever. We’re not sure this is the result RIM would have wanted, especially since our iPhone typed that paragraph (in portrait mode), at 28 wpm (4 mistakes).

Conclusions

There you have it. A comprehensive comparison between the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Storm. All in all, the Storm seems to have taken two steps forward, and the same two steps back. It’s highly desirable form factor coupled with difficult use cases and unoptimized performance, give it a mediocre flavour. On the other hand, the Bold continues to stand for what BlackBerry’s have always been good at, and we hope that continues with any future iterations.