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

[Bob Futrelle]

It really is that bad - here's a follow-up story:

December 4, 2008
>From the Desk of David Pogue
Readers React to David Pogue's Review of the BlackBerry Storm
By DAVID POGUE

I learned something last week.

In my Times print column, I reviewed the BlackBerry Storm, by far the
worst product Research in Motion has ever produced. I had problems
with its concept, problems with its clicky touch screen, problems with
its speed, and above all, problems with bugs (which the company
refused to acknowledge, even when I sent them videos of the phone
acting up and even locking up).

About 100 readers wrote to say that they had bought the Storm and now
regretted it. Some samples:

"I want to thank you for validating the experiences I've had with my
new BlackBerry Storm. It has been an absolute nightmare. As soon as I
return to New York, I will take advantage of Verizon's 30-day return
policy and get rid of this monstrosity."

"I rushed out last week to try the new Storm--and was frustrated,
confused and bewildered by the device. I couldn't use the browser, and
was even hard pressed to make a phone call."

"My Storm was like something from a Stephen King novel: possessed of
its own mind. Touching or selecting on the screen highlighted
something totally unrelated. The lag in switching from horizontal to
vertical almost made it seem that the screen was deciding its own when
to shift."

"One of my co-workers, who is almost militant in his disdain for all
things Apple, couldn't wait to get his hands on a Storm. Lo & behold,
30 minutes later, he was trying to figure out a way to get his money
back."

"I think there's an important distinction between quality control
(whether or not something works as designed) and quality of design.
This device fails miserably in both categories."

"Where do I begin? The address book is a joke. Can't go straight to
any given letter, so must scroll all the way through every time.
Everything's slow: Scrolling, screen rotating, selecting apps,
search... everything. It has crashed several times just trying to play
movies. When you press the screen, it jumps over and "clicks" the key
next to what you wanted... this is maddeningly frustrating. The bottom
line: BlackBerry has created the Zune of touchscreen phones."

"Having tried the Storm on two different days to make sure it was
really as bad as it seemed the first time, 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."

"Typing is not easy. My fingertips hurt after a few e-mails, not to
mention the frustration with many typos. Also, when you are scrolling
and you touch the bottom edge of the screen (landscape mode) by
accident, the keyboard pops up. It takes so long to do anything. Not
worth it."

"The most disappointing piece of equipment I have ever seen. I waited
a year to upgrade to Storm from Treo...Now I got a good old BlackBerry
8330 instead, and I am a happy girl!"

"Oh my God! I read your review, and it was the exact same experience I
had! I was EXTREMELY disappointed. This thing is a dud. I am very sad,
but at least I have my Curve."

"I could not agree with you more about the BlackBerry Storm. I picked
it up at my local Verizon store, and after typing an e-mail on the
full keyboard (which took 3 full seconds to appear when I went to
landscape mode), and seeing the delayed key response and multiple
errors, I just put it down and walked away. If it can't do e-mail
well, the rest is irrelevant. I will wait for the BlackBerry 'Silver
Lining': a Storm interface and a true BlackBerry keyboard."

Not all readers agreed with me, however. About a dozen new Storm
owners wrote to say that, while they, too, found some bugs and
sluggishness, they liked the phone nonetheless.

But I also heard from about a dozen people who have not tried the
Storm, but nonetheless poured on me the Internet equivalent of molten
lead:

"Having you comment on technology is like having Tom Cruise comment on
religion. You stretch and distort facts to fit your opinions. Your
biases are obvious to any objective person."

"I have serious doubts about your ability to evaluate tech. And your
friends, for that matter. Yes, the Storm has a different emphasis than
past BlackBerries, but it will continue to sell like pancakes."

"Your article is a shameful report from someone who obviously is not
knowledgeable in any of these newer items. Perhaps you should find
something else to write about; although from this article you probably
wouldn't do well in any area. Shame on you and on THE NEW YORK TIMES
FOR SUCH INFERIOR REPORTING."

"For those of us with no need to speed type, the Storm is a great
phone. In an economy like this, the world can do without ignorantly
people more concerned with their own egos ripping apart an innovative
and well conceived product. May the Devil find out you're dead
immediately after you're gone."

Well!

It always blows my mind when people tell me that my assessment of some
product is wrong -- without ever even having tried the thing
themselves. I just can't get over that.

And now for the thing I learned:

For years, tech critics like me have occasionally endured abuse from
the Cult of Mac. If you write anything that even hints at a
less-than-perfect Apple effort (like my reviews of, for example, the
original Apple TV, iMovie '08 or MobileMe), the backlash is swift,
vitriolic and heated. We're talking insults, vulgarities and even
threats. I've always thought that that vocal sub-population of Mac
fans make up the world's most watchful, most hostile grass-roots
lobbying arm.

But now I see that I was wrong. There's an even nastier one: the
BlackBerry nuts.

When did this happen? Maybe when Apple entered the smartphone racket
and started getting all the attention. All of a sudden, Apple was no
longer the underdog; it was suddenly Goliath. The poor little
BlackBerry was the underdog.

In the third quarter of 2008, the iPhone unseated the BlackBerry as
the world's best-selling smartphone (6.9 million to 6.1 million). Now,
those numbers may not be representative of a trend: the iPhone
benefited from pent-up demand for the 3G version, while BlackBerry
sales were suffering because everyone was waiting for the three hot
new winter models (Bold, Flip, Storm). (Apple's "quarter" ended
September 27; RIM's ended August 30.)

But if the iPhone keeps it up, watch out. There's a new oppressed
minority in town. And you wouldn't like them when they're angry.



On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Bob Futrelle <bob.futrelle at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>