Blackberry Storm has some good qualities, and some not so good

The BlackBerry Storm came out not too long after I purchased my Blackberry Curve. Like lots of the latest consumer electronics devices, you're always hesitant to jump in and make a purchase, because you know your device will be trumped by something cooler in a very short time.

That was the case with my Curve, but not exactly. Shortly after I acquired my Curve, the Storm crossed my desk, as the object of a Tear Down. My first inclination with a Tear Down is to try the device out for a while, to get a feel for the user experience. In this case, it was to see what I was missing out on.

To my surprise (and delight), I found out that the Storm doesn't have a better user experience. In fact, I like my Curve better. The biggest reason for that is the touch interface that accompanies the Storm. I found it quite difficult to press the right buttons. I may have big fingers, but they're not so big that I should have that much trouble with the interface.

Being the engineer that I am, I decided not to let that one design flaw completely ruin the user experience, although it was hard to get passed that point. I found that as a telephone, the Storm worked really well. And that's an important component, although I use the phone more for e-mail and texting than I do as a phone (nobody calls anybody anymore, do they?).

The second feature I found to be quite attractive was the imaging quality, both for still images and for video. So that's where my Tear Down started. I wanted to find out what was the cause of those qualities that I found to be so appealing.