Blackberry Storm 9530 Review

When I think back to my school years, I remember having to rely on quarters to call home.  Then there were pagers, and I still vividly remember the first time I used a cell phone.  Now, it seems that even your kitchen sink has a radio of some kind in it.  The Storm is no different, packing four different radios: CDMA/EVDO-A at 850/1900Mhz, GSM/GPRS/EDGE at 850/900/1800/1900Mhz, UMTS/HSPA at 2100Mhz, and good old Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.  No WiFi, but the rumor mill has already started on the Storm 2, and supposedly that will incorporate various flavors of 802.11.

I’ll make one passing note about reception: I haven’t had any issues with the Storm – I’ve always been able to make a call when I needed to.  This isn’t saying much, because I have Verizon service for a reason: where I live, work, and travel they provide hands down the best coverage available.  GPS reception is also good, maintaining lock even through long tunnels and through terrain; I could ask for more frequent update intervals in most applications, but I’ll call that a software problem for now.  I haven’t extensively tested the Bluetooth, but I haven’t had any pairing problems and audio quality is very good.

The phone auto-selects the best network if you elect to enable it on first boot.  You can manually select which technology to use as well, thereby forcing the phone onto different provider networks.  I’ve tried this a couple of times and it’s been seamless and quick.  In the US, no UMTS/HSPA is available due to conflicting frequencies, so the best GSM data connection is still EDGE.  EVDO works well, though, and I’ve found that when I have call coverage I have data coverage, so basically all the time.  I still need to get with Verizon to figure out what the deal is with slow downloads, but I have a feeling it’s a software problem – my older HTC devices download via EVDO much faster than the Storm, and I think this is due to a still-evolving operating system from RIM.

For other more physical connection options you of course have a USB port.  Not any USB port, mind you, but a fancy new micro-USB port – the one chosen by a league of mobile device manufacturers to sell more accessories become the new standard interface.  Yes, you have to buy new cables; no, I haven’t heard a convincing argument for why.  Suffice to say it’s great, in that it works just like the old port – it’s just smaller.