We’ve just received a shiny new BlackBerry Storm from Vodafone UK. It’s our first expedition into the world of BlackBerry and we thought we’d share our thoughts on the interface and interaction design of the device in general.
Overview
The Storm is a rough diamond. Lovely industrial design, but let down substantially not by the lack of Wi-Fi, which has had all the press, but instead by the quality of the touch-operating system. Touted as an iPhone killer, I can confidently confirm that the Storm is unfortunately only half an iPhone. Confusing interactions, hard-to-click buttons and an unpolished UI result in an irritating performance. BlackBerry OS 4.7 is clearly a platform that hasn’t been fully designed for finger interaction, which is a huge shame. That said, the Storm will get better with age, with over the air (OTA) software updates, through which most of these issues will be ironed out. The Storm (or its successors) will in time contend with the likes of the iPhone.
Lets all touch and click
The main difference between the touch interface of the iPhone and the Storm is that the screen on the Storm allows you to cast you finger across it, highlighting the UI elements, but nothing is actioned until you press into the screen. Pushing your finger into the screen actually indents the screen into the device and this is what is defined as a “click” in the interface. It takes a moment to figure out (especially for those of us who are used to the iPhone way of life). It’s different, but it actually works. I’m curious as to what the engineers have devised beneath the screen. Is it time to take a screwdriver to the Storm?
Not for the traveller/talker/photo taker
Battery life seems to be worryingly low (is this perhaps why Vodafone chose to remove a Wi-Fi option?) Since receiving the device, I’ve charged it from empty 4 times (in four days). Yes, I’ve been testing it, but I wouldn’t class my actual usage as heavy. Today, after a full charge, 12 hours later I have 60% battery left. My usage for the last 12 hours included a 20 minute phone call, 5 emails received and a combination of 20 sms’ received/sent. Bluetooth is off. No browser, camera or games usage.
Previous tests with the camera left me with unsatisfactory results every time. I would, without doubt, always opt for shooting with my N95 (if I had it handy). The Storm picture quality is quite desaturated, blurry and noisy. The auto-focus is extremely slow and irritating and I’ve had one crash where I’ve had to remove the battery to start the device again. After taking 5-6 pictures, the battery depleted by some 12% – I’ve not had a chance to test out video, but I’ll keep my expectations low.
Don’t make me wait!
If I had one request for RIM, it would be to improve the speed of the interface. Compared to other devices, it’s not the slowest but it’s certainly far far slower than the iPhone and, once you’ve used an Android G1, you could be forgiven for thinking that the “slow-motion” setting had been turned permanently on. Switching between landscape and portrait modes takes too long and the immediate feedback that one requires from a touch-screen device isn’t quite there yet (numerous people have also mentioned sticky accelerometer issues, getting stuck in portrait mode). That said, future updates will hopefully start to correct these issues and we could have a pleasurable experience.
Landscape text entry is a delightful experience
My favourite experience when it comes to my Storm is when I have to write messages, memos or emails. I start a new email, turn the Storm onto its side (landscape view), after a short delay, the keyboard swaps to landscape and I start to type using my two thumbs. I’ve only used the Storm for four days but I’m already addicted to entering text on this small screen device. It’s just a joy to use and once I’ve learnt the keyboard layout, I’ll be extremely efficient and happy.
On the subject of input, one of the other lovely interaction elements that took me by surprise was the glow technique. When you touch a key on the keyboard, a blue glow eminates from beneath your thumb. Its radius is quite large (covering up to half of each of the button’s neighours). The glow acts as a feedback helping to indicate that you’ve highlighted/pressed the right button.
Storm text entry with glowing indicators
The “app store” experience
Two days after receiving the phone, the software self-registered itself and the “app-store” became available as an option from the menu panel. In total, 11 applications were currently available for download. Most of them designed and developed by RIM. The experience here was mixed; server errors (Null Pointer Exceptions), apps that didn’t allow you to download them (apparently due to session issues), apps that sounded impressive, but ended up failing to live up to expectations (is it just me, or would you expect a flickr app to do more than just upload your pictures?).
I’ve not had any success installing the Facebook app (which I’ve heard great things about), but I was very impressed by the speed and simplicity of the Google Map app (although I wish the icons had text labels above them when you touch them) – great use of cached data and simple gestural swipe actions to navigate.
My finger isn’t the size of a stylus pen!
The help pages are, at best, irritating. You are presented with a list-driven interface and this is where the major problem both begins and ends. This list has clearly been lifted off classic non-touch BlackBerrys and hasn’t been optimised for finger-selection. Selectable areas of items are only as wide as their text, so to click on a list item titled “Maps” is actually quite a feat, requiring a degree of care, attention and patience (something which, on the iPhone, is painless). Replace with a simple list, where active item areas span the width of the device. Introduce some top/bottom padding to each item to make them finger compatible and hey presto, an altogether nicer help page.
Missing polish
Where’s the “bounce” feedback when you get to the end of a list of photos? Why use two different types of scroll bar (one of which doesn’t have an indicator for how far you’ve got to scroll until you get to the end)? Why isn’t there any momentum in the gestural interface? Why don’t all action buttons have text labels that helpfully float above your finger? Why the lag between finger action and interface response?
Boot-up time
I count a total of about 3-5 seconds from the press of the on button to a fully lit and active home screen. Very impressive, but I hope it’s something I won’t be doing too often.
Lets not end here…
Although the Storm hasn’t lived up to my expectations, I’ll be carrying it around with me over the next 12 months (as my primary phone) and will hopefully be reporting of the improvements with successive updates to the software. Stay tuned and I’d be interested in hearing other peoples’ experiences, both good and bad.
6 comments
Rich Hyndman
24th Nov 2008
Great stuff Ribot, I’ve been wanting to get my hands on one of these for a while – but it looks like I should wait a bit longer. Have you tried out its media playing capabilities yet? A screen like that should make a good movie player. Also will you be at MGoL on Wednesday? if so pleaseee bring the Storm.
Eloise
24th Nov 2008
If only all reviews could make my mind up so well…
Thank you ribotCorp!
Andrew Ebling
24th Nov 2008
Great informed and balanced review ribot! Please keep us posted on the App Store – this is something I’m particularly interested in.
PC-ASSIST
24th Nov 2008
(I got flamed terribly for pointing out these things on the Crackberry forum…)
Problems in order:
1) Serious lag between portrait and landscape – sometimes greater than 10 seconds.
There are no direction keys where you need it most: editing text. They do show up in going up and down the list of emails.
2) Editing text in a field is impossible unless your fingers are heated stylus points and see-through. If you try to edit in a text field, like in the crappy browser, if you follow directions, the highlight turns into a box. Now you are supposed to swipe left to move it. Instead, the entire field goes left.
3) Click on a page or interaction button on a page to accept or do somthing and it regularly zooms in instead.
4) It can take up to 15 presses on the screen before the snooze button even thinks that it is being pressed.
5) The least intuitive phone I have ever tried, and I though that Windows Mobile was bad. Try finding bluetooth if you are new to the Blackberry’s. In setup, there is a bluetooth routine, but instead of guiding you to the way to turn it on, it just tells you that it is disabled. It took me a bit before I finally pressed one of the real buttons on the phone to get the menu that had the “turn bluetooth on” portion.
6) Entering text is absolutely difficult. The accuracy of the screen is about where a BETA test unit would be. I press on one key and get something else, only having to start the whole dang routine over to get what I need. How wasteful is that?
7) Try finding the “-” in portrait and then in landscape modes. In one mode it is on the Numeric and the other it is on Symbol. this kind of inconsistencies tells me that they have not really field tested the unit. This applies to many of the other common symbols.
9) No flash.
10) No pdf viewer.
11) Random duplicates after using the wizard to move data from my Mogul.
12) Fatal Error when using the website (RIM’s) to update and check for new software. Without Fail.
13) Bluetooth stack is poor when connected to a Jawbone that works perfectly fine with three other phones. Lots of static.
14) Even when the power is off, the phone will beep if accidentally pressed. I tried keeping the settings on for the beep so I would have audible confirmation when pressing the whacko screen.
15) Phone is unusable when connected to the computer.
16) Total inconsistencies with software. In one application, the accept key is buried in the menu key versus having to scroll 10 times to get to the bottom where the accept key usually is.
17) POSITIVE: The Blackberry syncing is far superior to Activesync, which never fails to produce error messages that only someone in another parallel dimension could figure out how to solve.
18) It was a great education on what happens when you rush something out the door.
19) Some of this stuff will be natural to regular users of the Blackberrys. But how would you market this to a non-initated market share to compete with an iPhone?
20) Even with the poor backbone of Sprint, my mogul is easier and more intuitive to use.
21) If you lay it flat, it gets confused as to whether or not it shold be portrait or landscape. Crappy if you hate waiting twenty seconds for it to decide.
22) buttons dissappear when pressing and go blank…
AJ Kock
25th Nov 2008
Nice neutral review. Mmm, that photo looks familiar.
Shaun
1st Jan 2009
I’ve heard several people complain about having to click the screen to type. Are people really that lazy? I think it’s a great feature! It doesn’t take any effort and I like being able to touch first to make sure I’m on the right key before clicking to type and the click is satisfying. It also adds more functionality to the screen -more methods of input.
I’m sure everyone that complains about the click is a hopeless iLemming. Here’s a little side rant for my pleasure: Apple is a joke. They are so over-controlling to their customers and their products are a joke. I wouldn’t have this opinion if there wasn’t so much hype for Apple products and everyone viewed them for what they really are. Every product of theirs has vastly superior competition (FACT!) that costs far less, but you are’t cool unless you’ve got the white ear buds. “Baaaah!” I take pride in NEVER owning an Apple product. When did it become cool to own a locked down computer that is marketed to people too dumb to operate a PC? And what is the deal with the single-button mice??? Seriously! Are customers too dumb for 2 buttons? I’m not a Microsoft lover either. I’m just not foolish enough to get sucked into the Apple hype. Do some research, people, and pull your head out! -Rant shortened for brevity.
It’s not really fair at all to compare the iPhone to the Storm, because the Storm is a first-generation phone that is still in it’s infancy. Just wait, iLemmings! The Storm’s day is coming! Oh yes!
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