Pogue turns the screw on RIM's BlackBerry Storm
David Pogue at the NYT was among the most blunt of those who slammed the Storm. The response, he writes, is denial from RIM itself and a hundred-ish letters in his mailbag from customers who agree with him. Here's just one:
"I too find it unbelievable that these are for sale. Verizon should just box all these Storms up and send them to Toys R Us, who can sell them in the Brainteaser section, right next to the Rubik's Cubes."
About a dozen wrote in to disagree.
"Having you comment on technology is like having Tom Cruise comment on religion,"That is, it must be said, a spicy rejoinder.
Here's the interesting thing about all this: everyone has made touchscreen-only phones that would have seemed revolutionary were it not for the one they followed. But while the likes of Samsung's Instinct and T-Mobile's G1 can impress us by offering 80%, RIM can't. RIM's gear must always be more-or-less perfect, with only the slightest of give for price-range context. They are tools, and must perform the functions not just of a phone, but a BlackBerry, and anything less will only fail in sharper relief because of it.
MSNBC covers the situation in more traditional fashion.
Pogue's col [NYT]
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The issue here isn't that RIM only offered 80% and is held to a higher standard. The issue is that the Storm's "revolutionary innovation," the clickable screen, is a problem in search of a solution ... Or, rather, a solution that makes the problem worse. It's far easier to type on a normal touchscreen than it is to click this damn thing over and over again. That's the big issue with Storm, beyond of course the horrid (but fixable) firmware bugs.
my friend works for verizon and he told us a few days prior to the release that these phones are garbage. Basically, he said, the phone was a scam and didn't live up to any of the purported expectations.
That is, it must be said, a spicy rejoinder.
That would be spicy if Scientology even HAD a market share to compare to Apple's.
just sayin'