BlackBerry Storm 9500 Candy Bar Touchscreen 3G mobile phone handset reviews and tariffs

+ Very nice looking phone with lots of wonderful features.

- Touch screen is a little hard to use if your fingers are not slender and pointy..!!
Needs to have WLAN connectivity

+ Good screen and typical, but updated Blackberry interface. Small and smart looking phone.

- I found the touch screen hard work and the physical 'pressing' was made more difficult by the fact that your finger, however slim or fat, tends to 'spread' when you have to press (& double press at times) to effect an action. I also had difficulties with the Portrait version of the keypad with the 'double letter' per key (like the Pearl) and smart type software which was not always 'smart'.

+ Email and internet are great. Touch screen is good, beta than the I phone cos u av t click the screen so u tend nt to make many mistakes.

- Battery life is realy poor but if you don't have applications open when nt in use u can improve it a great deal

+ the sleek design,and the way the screen turns as you move it around

- battery you have to charge it everyday

+ Smart looking, Brand name, Email on the move, Loads Applications, Sat Nav, 2 & 3 G settings, large screen, Sure type. fast start up for a smart phone, ease of set up on to PC.

- Key pad very awkward to use, Orientation setting,

+ Ease of setup, range of features, phone sound quality, input device

- Accessing contacts is cumbersome, battery life is very poor - not more than 24 hours even with limited use.

+ Great email, really like the clickable touch screen

- Browser is hard to use and clumsy, nowhere near as good as the iPhones. A stylus might make things a bit easier.

+ Looks good

- No facility to Sync with my enterprise server

+ Ability to watch movies and videos on it, listen to music, take good photos and email on the bus!

- Battery life could be better

+ Setting up e-mail on the phone is very easy

- I used up the battery in a day but then I was trying everything

+ As always with a blackberry it get's top marks for email and other forms of communication. I love the way that you can select an option or object but you have to physically click the screen to actully choose that option. This makes it easier not to make mistakes. The spell checker and auto correct is great along with the self learning word recognition.

- There is a definate lag sometimes between programs or you are left hanging after making a definate selection of an object or program.

+ the phone is stylish and sophisticated, it has alot of applications so you can keep up to date with everything thats going on.

- the battery life is dismal.

+ its great looking and functional

- bluetooth is complicated for its function having to re open the bluetooth function every time you send or recieve more than one item, as too is the initial set up to transfer items from your device to your pc and vice versa

+ ease of access, and ease of use

- battery life

+ great for email on the go, the push screen is great better than any other touch phone used and its packed with features.

- browser not the quickest, quality of calls not brilliant and sometimes when on a call you can accidently push the menu buttons as phone is pressed against ear!

+ Easy to use, looks very good. Some of the features are very good, Email, web browsing etc...
Generally a very nice phone

- Poor battery life and several glitches including the accelerometer in the screen

+ The Blackberry Storm is easy to set up and use with excellent features.

- The battery life is disappointing but I suspect that this is based on the fact that the back light takes a lot of power.

+ Its smart, good web browsing, good access to email, good touch screen. Good extra features.

- Battery life is poor.

+ Great design & Email functions - Overall - agreat phone

- probably inferior to Ipod on applications - would improve with cleared instruction manuel

+ it is easy to use,

- battery doesnt last very long,

+ Very good variety of services

- navigation is difficult

+ everything is good on this phone cant fault it.

- the battery dosent seem to last as long as my other phones in the past.

+ The available services

- The touch screen navigation is not as responsive as i would like.

+ it doesnt have any!

- too big, bulky, gets hots, slow, ugly, battery life is very poor, the key pad is made for a person with childs fingers!

+ Looks great, email, internet

- Battery life is appalling!

+ Blackberry conectivity

- Touch screen is not as good as i phone
Battery life is not as good as it should be !

+ Ideal for a businessman on the move, always accessible. Keyboard simple and convenient.

- Very short battery life.

+ Everything is good about this phone I honestly cannot fault it.

- NA

+ email, web browser, sat nav

- keypad, keypad, keypad

+ email

- battery life, touch screen

+ Its good for navigating the internet at an excellent speed, easy emailing, sms and mms. The camera is good for videos. The fact the memory can be expanded to 16GB for all music, photos and videos.

- The keyboard is very tricky and take a lot of getting used too. The Camera is not very good for taking still photographs but good for taking videos.

+ Easy to use, simple to use and program
E-Mail is easy and quick too
Web Speed, fast downloads
Super desk or bedside dock is great and a must buy if you get a storm
Screen quality and video is the best I've ever seen

- Poor Signal connection, sometimes drops calls to no signal, then back to three bars in a matter of two sec's
Sleepy responce when waking up from holder can take some seconds to respond
Poor Battery life, gets better after a week of charging and discharging though, so stick with it!

+ Reviewer left no comment

- it was faulty from day 1!

+ Reviewer left no comment

- the keyboard is very frustrating and slow to use . also as an MPS you cant sync with Itunes as most purchased songs are protected

+ easy to use

- earphone socket on side on phone, to easy to unlock accidently

+ Really good design. Hnad for all your organising and communication needs. Excellent video ability and sound

- Phone is sometime poor in temrs of operation and signal quality.

+ Overall it is an excellent product.

- The battery gives me cause for concern as it does not last more than three days.

+ good points was email

- but bad was trying use the touch screen where fingers are to big yo never hit what you want so annoying

+ Looks nice. Nice leathery pouch.

- Everything. Dont do it...

+ Reviewer left no comment

- really difficult to navigate and find what your looking for

+ I think the overall design of the Storm is really good, the UI looks great. When making calls the qualitiy of them is also good.

- When taking pictures, it takes ages after pushing the button to actualy getting the picture take. The battery life is poor, your lucky to have it last 1 day. when rotating the storm its very jerky to change to horizontal. When clicking the buttons on the menu, its not very smooth actualy accessing the application, just genrally slow while navigating through it.

+ everything really

- its quite big well wide.

+ Touch screen very easy to use and display quality excellent. Message composition a delight thanks to user-friendly keyboards and accelerometer function. Synchronisation with Outlook easy to set up and subsequent organisation of contacts well designed. Range of applications very impressive.

- I expected the battery life to be longer but I am using it frequently (or my family is!) so perhaps this will be less of an issue when 'we' get used to having it around.

+ Looks good, easy to use

- Battery life is very poor

+ Great phone for e-mail etc.

- The software freezes from time to time!!!

+ Reviewer left no comment

- Buggy software . Hard to type fast. Unresponsive. No flash player. No app store. Bad quality speaker.

+ nice big screen good clear buttons

- battery dont last much more than a day and half

+ design and the amount it does. the click screen

- battery life

+ Reviewer left no comment

- the battery life only last for a few ours

+ very good overall

- Reviewer left no comment

+ get my emails when im out of the office

- buttons dont always work

+ All the latest media products, video, mp3 etc

- Slower to react than the iPhone. Battery not as good as my Curve, but that is a minor issue considering the extra features.

+ Screen

- Appalling battery life

+ the touch screen is very easy to use and the video quality is awesome

- the battery lasts just over a day

+ Touch screen is great

- A bit heavy and bulky

+ easy to use phone, brilliant for instant messaging and emails,great camera picture quality

- battery life is not a good as i expected to to be

+ i have nothing but good to say well produced phone.

- Reviewer left no comment

+ has so much to offer its like taking a laptop with you the web access and applications are easyily acessable, the key pad is very easy to use, the phone altho a little bulk is great to look at.

- the life span of the batter is very disapointing as this phone can hold a great amout but using all the avaliable functions has a huge drain on the battery life as of yet not to many ways to customise ( which i expect to improve over time )

+ its a good phone with good features. difficult to use at first butt getss easier

- battery life is beyond a joke. ive had to take out longer cover on my old phone because it is lucky to last 24 hours with hardly any usage. i find myself using my old phone far more than this. even when the battery is flat i have to wait for 15 minutes before use

+ Over all quality is good however it can get sluggish at times and needs to have the battery removed to re-boot as from time to time it freezes.

- Battery needs to be recharged once a day. I have found that by turning off certain features the battery last's a little longer but if using the web features can expect to get about four hours usage. That's the only thing that lets the phone down.

+ Stylish looking phone that does everything I need it to do! Screen and navigation easier to use than I anticipated and overall very impressed.

- Camera quality not quite as good as could have been, but still not bad.

+ I love the fact that the internet and email is available to me. Not only that, but I can link my current hotmail account to it as well, so I dont have to tell my address book contacts that they need to use a different account to get me. The unit is very funky, loads of apps are available to suit everybody. an excellent camera with good results. I use the alarm function every morning. The text and email notification sounds are turned off by putting it into bedside mode with 1 touch, and when your awake and ready, 1 touch brings them back in to your inbox. The voice command via my bluetooth headset is excellent. Its very intuitive and you can connect with any of your contacts and whichever variant (home, work, mobile), that you need. I can tie up my hotmail calendar into the Blackberry calendar, which is very handy. Sounds are good to Ok with the internal speaker, but as good as a top notch mp3 player via a good quality pair of earbuds.
By the way, its also got an awesome SatNav capability built in. This is free for 1st month and subscription from then on via Vodafone. Google maps can also be called upon via the apps. and utilising the onboard gps you can locate your current position, or even geotag all the pictures you take.

- Can be difficult to prepare an email, especially if you need to go back into an email to add or re-word before sending it. on a few instances, I have lost all the content of that email from the point of the cursor onwards, MUCH to my annoyance and disbelief. I think this is mostly down to big fingers, little screen and quirky touchscreen. It will need a charge everyday, but unless you need it glued to your ear 24 hours a day then that wont be a problem.

+ Love the look of it - it is very tactile and didn't really need to refer to the manual too much as it was easy to set up and use

- I'm sure there must be a way of defaulting this but most times when using the key pad I have to enable the multi tap as it goes into predictive text (which I am not very good at)

+ It is a nice phone with lots of features, internet is very good. Nice large screen and good quality music,

- The battery life is incredibly short (only 12 hours on mine). I wish there was an option to keep the portrait mode instead of switching from portrait to landscape.

+ Keyboard takes a bit of getting used to but gets easier with use. great picture quality and good features on the phone.

- could do with a better designed case as this may not protect it if you dropped the phone (depending on which way it landed.

+ The phone is really nice and full of some great features.
Great screen resolution. Movies look awesome.
Good integration with office documents.
Some great downloadable apps available.

- Signal strength can be pretty weak. I have two phones and whilst my other phone can be full bars on signal the Blackberry struggles to get a couple of bars. Wifi Connectivity would have been a nice to have feature but I knew this didn't have it when I purchased it, so I can't complain. But it would have made this phone even better considering the whole purpose of Blackberry's are Data exchange! The touch screen is not very sensitive and seems to lack precision. Sometimes locks up/crashes requiring a soft reset.

+ very good for email

- the keyboard can be difficult to use

+ GPS really good.
Easier to text.
Web browsing really quick and easy.

- Battery life is very poor - needs recharging daily.
Keypad is not great - keys are small therefore you hit the wrong keys frequently.

+ i like the look of this phone

- the screen is too hard to use, when typing a message i keep pressing the wrong letters! i have very slim fingers and cant imagine how hard it would me for a man to use!

+ This is one of the best smartphones there is. Once I navigated my way around the menu system, I found it intuitive with more functions than I could point my proverbial stick at. I can manage all my e-mail accounts easily and I find the way that the Storm syncs with the contact list, Facebook, MSN Messenger and the likes, fantastic. I find the touch screen easier to use than to the iPhone for example, as it can be pushed in, a looooot more tactile. The camera is adequate, with a decent flash and zoom function. There is a trillion applications for the Storm, which I am slowly working my way through! Finally, the PC software is excellent also. For business or pleasure, this smartphone is ideal.

- The sound quality of the media player is terrible, the worst audio clipping I've ever heard. I do use a proper MP3 player anyway, but just a word of warning for those of you who like to use your phone as an MP3 player. There is still a few bugs that ned to be ironed out, such as the most stupidly-placed keypad lock key in existence - I lock the keypad, pull it out of my pocket and it's unlocked and at some random part of the menu system! I'm sure most of the issues will be dealt with in due time, with a firmware upgrade or two.

+ modern, quick email services

- cant retrieve pictures, bad battery life.

+ Great design. Great software.

- Touchscreen navigation frustrating at times

+ Great phone with a great range of applications and features.

- The battery life is pretty poor even without making any calls you're looking at 2days maximum

+ Navigation is brilliant, the applications available for use are very good as well. I really like the feature of the touch-twice screen, where when you actuallty want to select something you have to actually click the screen like a mouse.
Text, email and internet browsing are all straight forward. The camera facilities are very good for a phone with so much else going on.

- The battery life isn't as fantastic as other phones but it really depends on your usage. Heavy abuse of Applications, Bluetooth and internet really drain it.
Occasionally, I have found the software will freeze as well and will just reset itself again but can be a pain.

+ Email and Facebook are easy to use and really useful.

- Touch screen is a pain, even after a month of 'getting used to it' it's still annoying. Battery life is really short, has died on me a few times already. Phone has started being really slow as well, taking forever to load and even not allowing me to answer calls. Buttons on almost all sides of the phone are really fiddly and always causing the phone to so something you don't want it to.

+ The Blackberry is brilliant for checking out your e-mails when your not at home and you want to keep a check on your e-mails.

- But the battery life can be quite short when you go onto the web and wish to watch the mobile tv.

+ Tyhe battery life,nearly 4 days of medium use

- Being difficult to completely exit some applications,ie you could find yourself still "online" in a web browser the following day or days!!

+ Ease to use

- Aspects on it that you may not want but get anyway this is not bad just makes the product over clutered

+ looks smart

- Not good for people with fat fingers

+ Neat compact simple to use multitap anyway!

- Battery life is poor.

+ Free email
stylish

- I do not really like the push in screen. Many a times I keep thinking that I may have broken my screen.

+ The email and web browser is very easy and good to use

- The battery life is very poor

+ very easy to use! the touch screen is so simple to use its great!! A+++ web browsing!!!

- poor battery! if you use camera or browse the web then it drains the battery n you WILL be charging every night!!!

+ Reviewer left no comment

- Battery Life is absolutely terrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Predictive text isn't good and don't like qwerty key board - this is the only way to use predictive text.

+ If this phone had the apps of the iPhone it would be a killer! That said the apps it does have are awesome and the ones you really want and need rather than just fun to play with once or twice. Email is top drawer and the design # and feel is ace. GPS is also very good for a phone. Click screen is good too - you can 'feel' the click unlike other touch screens. I love it

- Does have some minor software glitches that are being worked on. Screen randomly decides to turn off every now and again - about once every 2 days, but it does behave itself after that.