[Isu570-f08-rpf] Blackberry Storm - Failing all the HCI guidelines

[Bob Futrelle]

The New York Times

November 27, 2008
State of the Art
BlackBerry Storm Downgraded to a Depression
By DAVID POGUE

Research in Motion (R.I.M.), the company that brought us the
BlackBerry, has been on a roll lately. For a couple of years now, it's
delivered a series of gorgeous, functional, supremely reliable
smartphones that, to this day, outsell even the much-adored iPhone.

Here's a great example of the intelligence that drives R.I.M.: The
phones all have simple, memorable, logical names instead of
incomprehensible model numbers. There's the BlackBerry Pearl (with a
translucent trackball). The BlackBerry Flip (with a folding design).
The BlackBerry Bold (with a stunning design and faux-leather back).

Well, there's a new one, just out ($200 after rebate, with two-year
Verizon contract), officially called the BlackBerry Storm.

But I've got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud.

The first sign of trouble was the concept: a touchscreen BlackBerry.
That's right — in its zeal to cash in on some of that iPhone touch
screen mania, R.I.M. has created a BlackBerry without a physical
keyboard.

Hello? Isn't the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry?
A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll
wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize
inside.

R.I.M. hoped to soften the blow by endowing its touch screen with
something extra: clickiness. The entire screen acts like a mouse
button. Press hard enough, and it actually responds with a little
plastic click.

As a result, the Storm offers two degrees of touchiness. You can tap
the screen lightly, or you can press firmly to register the palpable
click.

It's not a bad idea. In fact, it ought to make the on-screen keyboard
feel more like actual keys. In principle, you could design a brilliant
operating system where the two kinds of taps do two different things.
Tap lightly to type a letter — click fully to get a pop-up menu of
accented characters (é, è, ë and so on). Tap lightly to open
something, click fully to open a shortcut menu of options. And so on.

Unfortunately, R.I.M.'s execution is inconsistent and confusing.

Where to begin? Maybe with e-mail, the most important function of a
BlackBerry. On the Storm, a light touch highlights the key but doesn't
type anything. It accomplishes nothing — a wasted software-design
opportunity. Only by clicking fully do you produce a typed letter.

It's too much work, like using a manual typewriter. ("I couldn't send
two e-mails on this thing," said one disappointed veteran.)

It's no help that the Storm shows you two different keyboards,
depending on how you're holding it (it has a tilt sensor like the
iPhone's).

When you hold it horizontally, you get the full, familiar Qwerty
keyboard layout. But when you turn it upright, you get the less
accurate SureType keyboard, where two letters appear on each "key,"
and the software tries to figure out which word you're typing.

For example, to type "get," you press the GH, ER and TY keys.
Unfortunately, that's also "hey." You can see the problem. And trying
to enter Web addresses or unusual last names is utterly hopeless.

Furthermore, despite having had more than a year to study the iPhone,
R.I.M. has failed to exploit the virtues of an on-screen keyboard. A
virtual keyboard's keys can change, permitting you to switch languages
or even alphabet systems within a single sentence. A virtual keyboard
can offer canned blobs of text like ".com" and ".org" when it senses
that you're entering a Web address, or offer an @ key when addressing
e-mail.

But not on the Storm.

Incredibly, the Storm even muffs simple navigation tasks. When you
open a menu, the commands are too close together; even if your finger
seems to be squarely on the proper item, your click often winds up
activating something else in the list.

To scroll a list, you're supposed to flick your finger across the
screen, just as on the iPhone. But even this simple act is
head-bangingly frustrating; the phone takes far too long to figure out
that you're swiping and not just tapping. It inevitably highlights
some random list item when you began to swipe, and then there's a
disorienting delay before the scrolling begins.

There's no momentum to the scrolling, either, as on the iPhone or a
Google phone; you can't flick faster to scroll farther. Scrolling
through a long list of phone numbers or messages, therefore, is
exhausting.

Nor is that the Storm's only delayed reaction. It can take two full
seconds for the screen image to change when you turn it 90 degrees,
three seconds for a program to appear, five seconds for a button-tap
to register. (Remember: To convert seconds into BlackBerry time,
multiply by seven.)

In short, trying to navigate this thing isn't just an exercise in
frustration — it's a marathon of frustration.

I haven't found a soul who tried this machine who wasn't appalled,
baffled or both.

And that's before they discovered that the Storm doesn't have Wi-Fi.
It can't get onto the Internet using wireless hot spots, like the
iPhone or other BlackBerrys. Verizon's high-speed (3G) cellular
Internet network is now in 258 American cities, but that's still a far
cry from everywhere.

But wait, there's less. Both of my review Storms had more bugs than a
summer picnic. Freezes, abrupt reboots, nonresponsive controls,
cosmetic glitches.

My favorite: When I try to enter my Gmail address, the Storm's camera
starts up unexpectedly, turning the screen into a viewfinder — even
though the keyboard still fills half the screen. (R.I.M. executives
steadfastly refused to acknowledge any bugs. I even sent them videos
of the Storm's goofball glitches, but they offered only stony phone
silence.)

It's all too bad, because behind that disastrous software and balky
screen, there's a very nice phone.

It runs, after all, on Verizon's excellent cellphone network. If
you're one of the few remaining rich people in this country, you can
even use this phone overseas (roaming rates are as high as $5 a
minute). The phone features are excellent; calls are loud and clear.

The Storm has voice dialing, copy-and-paste, programmable side
buttons, removable battery and a standard headphone jack. You can open
and even edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments. Even
Mac fans can get in on the action, thanks to a free copy of the Pocket
Mac software.

You also get expandable storage; an eight-gigabyte memory card comes
in the box. The Web browser is the best yet on a BlackBerry:
double-tap to zoom, drag a finger to scroll. The camera is dog slow,
but it has a very good flash, a 2X zoom and a stabilizer; it takes
decent, if pale, pictures and movies. (And goodness knows, it's easy
to start up. Just enter a Gmail address...)

There's even GPS, with turn-by-turn directions as you drive ($10 a
month extra). The Storm can show voice mail in an Inbox-like list,
like the iPhone does ($3 a month extra). The screen (480 x 360 pixels)
is bright and beautiful.

Honestly, though, you'll probably never get that far. When you look at
your typing, slow and typo-ridden, and you repair the dents you've
made banging your head against the wall, you'll be grateful that
Verizon offers a 30-day return period.

How did this thing ever reach the market? Was everyone involved just
too terrified to pull the emergency brake on this train?

Maybe R.I.M. is just overextended. After all, it has just introduced
three major new phones — Flip, Bold, Storm — in two months, each with
a different software edition. Quality-control problems are bound to
result; the iPhone 3G went through something similar.

Web rumor has it that a bug-fix software update is in the works. Until
then, maybe Storm isn't such a bad name for this phone. After all —
it's dark, sodden and unpredictable.