NYT’s Pogue disses, really, really disses the Blackberry Storm
We’ve offered up our own coverage of the Blackberry Storm, the keyboardless smartphone just released by Verizon in the US last week. We’re still using the heck out of it a week later and so far our opinion of it hasn’t changed from that we shared originally. That’s not the case with a lot of reviewers and the latest to jump in the ring with the Storm is the New York Times’ David Pogue.
Pogue makes it clear, really, really clear that he hates the Storm. His review is brutal to say the least and if my experience with the Storm had been anything like his I would be just as grumpy. He’s not finding anything that works the way it’s supposed to work and it’s obvious he’s just plain irked at the phone.
But wait, there’s less. Both of my review Storms had more bugs thana summer picnic. Freezes, abrupt reboots, nonresponsive controls,cosmetic glitches.
My favorite: when I try to enter my Gmailaddress, the Storm’s camera starts up unexpectedly, turning the screeninto a viewfinder — even though the keyboard still fills half thescreen. (RIM executives steadfastly refused to acknowledge any bugs. Ieven sent them videos of the Storm’s goofball glitches, but theyoffered only stony phone silence.)
Whew! That’s one unhappy camper! The entire review he’s written is as scathing and negative as this snippet I’ve shared so you can see his experience has been not only bad but horrible.
I don’t know what to tell David other than this is the opposite of my own experience of a week with a Storm. It’s not perfect, I haven’t found a gadget yet that is in all respects. But it does what I expect it to and I just haven’t seen all the glitches and freezes that Pogue mentions. I’m not saying he doesn’t have them, maybe there’s a quality control problem letting bad units go out the door.
I will say that after reading Pogue’s review it is plain that he finds a touchscreen Blackberry without a keyboard to be silly. That smacks of "preconceived displeasure" to me and maybe that’s coloring his impression a bit. I’m just sayin’.
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I’ve read a fair share of negative or mixed reviews of the Blackberry Storm–but I found Pogue’s review bordering on misleading and irresponsible. You know something is wrong when a leading tech reviewer says “A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel.” (Uh, dude, it’s called the “iPod Touch”) He complains that the menu commands are “too close together” (so, change the font size, schmuck…problem solved).
He complains that the click interface is too much like a manual typewriter–but, for people like me frustrated by the iPhone virtual keyboard and pressing wrong buttons in general, the ability to highlight before you push a key is a welcome change.
And, he fails to mention such details as how you can actually replace the Storm’s battery if you need to, and that the Storm offers Bluetooth stereo.
A big part of this is Verizon’s fault, for releasing review versions of a product that was not 100 percent. (Though, I bought mine last week, and have experienced zero software bugs) Still, I expect better from a high-profile reviewer.
David Pogue has an Apple bias…
I would say in this respect he has a painfully obvious Iphone bias. Another words, the Storm is not working exactly like the Iphone; ie. exactly as Pogue expects it to; so therefore it’s not a great phone.
my storm works fine, none of the problems pogue has. anything that isn’t an iphone won’t satisfy him. total bias
“it is plain that he finds a touchscreen Blackberry without a keyboard to be silly.”
To be fair, RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis was pretty dismissive of the iPhone for that very reason, when it first came out.
“Lazaridis said, “the iPhone has severe limitations when it comes to effortless typing. Of course you have more screen space, with more artistic interactions, but that’s not enough. We’ve seen this before when Palm tried virtual keyboards. When they launched the Treo they licensed our keyboard.”
This is one of the reasons why we are developing for the iPhone and not the Blackberry. http://blog.cosential.com/?p=156
I’ve been using the Storm for a week and have to say I agree with most everything David wrote in the first page of his review. My review unit has been rock solid and I never experienced any of the issues he has on the second page so he obviously has a couple faulty devices.
I do find the Storm to be a frustrating device to use that is not optimized for finger use and I am constantly selecting the wrong menu item, entering the wrong character, etc. I went back to using the iPhone today to compare and it was like a breath of fresh air. I can fly on the iPhone and even enter text faster thanks to the very good predictive text on the iPhone.
I recommend RIM stick with QWERTY devices and roll out more outstanding devices like the Curve and Bold and leave the touch screen only device to Apple.
Pogue is a known Apple shill, so this is not surprising. It might be that the Storm is the closest yet to stealing the iPhone’s “thunder” if you will.
“Pogue is a known Apple shill.”
That’s just bogus. Do a little research, please! You’ll find that until the BlackBerry Storm, I have given rave reviews to EVERY BlackBerry I’ve ever reviewed. I LOVE the polish, the solidity, the care that RIM puts into most of its products! If anything, I’m surprised people never called me a BlackBerry shill!
On the other hand, I have had PLENTY of negative things to say about Apple products. Have a look: http://www.davidpogue.com/bio_photos/fanboy.html
If you really aren’t finding any bugs in your Storm, then drop me a line by email. I’ll walk you through some easily reproducible ones.
–David Pogue
“I would say in this respect he has a painfully obvious Iphone bias. Another words, the Storm is not working exactly like the Iphone; ie. exactly as Pogue expects it to; so therefore it’s not a great phone.”
Actually Pogue gave the iPhone G3 a pretty bad review, and he hates AT&T — he is a Verizon customer, so accusations of prejudice are misplaced. That said his statement about the missing keyboard is silly.