How BlackBerry Storm ‘beats’ iPhone

How BlackBerry Storm ‘beats’ iPhone

Indiatimes Infotech 3G iPhone may be more almost six months old, however, its list of competition seems to be only getting longer. Latest on the iPhone-rival (or killer) list is Blackberry Storm, the touchscreen phone from enterprise business phone maker Research In Motion (RIM). The eagerly anticipated touch-based iPhone 3G alternative has been launched in India by Vodafone. With Storm, RIM aims to give a tough fight to Apple which added enterprise features in its second-generation iPhone. As an industry analysts said, with Blackberry Storm RIM is putting one foot on both sides of the smartphone fence, as this device will appeal to those who like the iPhone but also want BlackBerry capabilities. Just like earlier BlackBerry models, Storm is compatible with enterprises' BlackBerry servers, which offer email integration, security and management features. However, Storm adds these features to a slew of enhancements designed to go after consumers wanting a sleek, iPhone-like design. So, does Blacberry succeed in its `iPhone makeover'? What is it that iPhone has that Storm doesn't and vice versa.

Copy and paste

BlackBerry has it, Nokia has it, however, 3G iPhone lacks it. BlackBerry's first touchscreen phone Storm also supports cut-and-paste feature. This means Storm users will be able to cut information like phone numbers, URLs, email addresses and so from one application and paste it somewhere else. All other BlackBerry phones also support this feature. Almsot all iPhone rivals including Google G1, Samsung Omnia and Nokia 5800 pack cut-and-paste functionality. Most of the smartphones available in the market support the cut and paste feature, but somehow Apple has preferred to stay away from it. Video recording BlackBerry's first touchscreen phone boasts of a 3.2 megapixel camera with video recording, auto focus, variable zoom and flash. This compares to Apple 3G iPhone's 2 megapixel camera with no video recording option and no flash support. Storm records videos at half-VGA resolution. Unlike iPhone, BlackBerry Storm offers video recording option. No video recording in 3G iPhone also means no video conferencing. iPhone also lacks optical zoom feature.

Clickable touchscreen

Storm's most striking feature is its 'Clickable' touchscreen. BlackBerry Storm packs a ClickThrough feature, which means its touchscreen is not just touchable but clickable. To select a specific area of a Web page, users can press down, so the entire screen clicks down. This means that the Storm has two levels of input (touch and click) which has been used to advance the interface. In simple words, when a user selects or enters a text, he can push the screen down. However, iPhone has a multi-touch display, but no clickable touchscreen.

Replaceable battery

User's one big disappointment in 3G iPhone was lack of user replaceable battery. Apple reportedly claims that it left out the user-replaceable battery option as it would add weight to the device. However, interestingly almost all smartphones in the market, even those at the lower-end offer this option. And so does BlackBerry Storm. The company claims Storm supports battery life of up to 15 days (standby time) and up to 5.5 hours (talk time). Apple iPhone support talktime of 300 minutes for 3G and 600 minutes for 2G and has a 300 hours standby time

Stereo Bluetooth
	BlackBerry Storm can sync with stereo Bluetooth or in-car Bluetooth handsfree, which again Apple iPhone cannot. BlackBerry's touch phone supports Bluetooth version 2.0. iPhone lacks A2DP on Bluetooth. A2DP audio devices, such as stereo Bluetooth headsets, offer enhances listening quality. Also, iPhone doesn't support file sharing feature including MP3, images and video files via Bluetooth.

Expandable memory
	BlackBerry's touchscreen device comes with 128MB of flash memory and 1GB of onboard memory. The phone offers support for microSD/SDHC expansion slot up to 16GB cards. However, iPhone which comes with storage options of 8GB and 16GB models cannot be further expanded. It has no memory expansion slot. The 2G iPhone was also available with same memory capacity with no further expansion.

Multimedia messaging

Unlike the iPhone that doesn't allow users to forward text messages as well as MMS messages, BlackBerry Storm doesn't have any such bar. The phone supports SMS and MMS functionality. In iPhone users can only send text messages or snapshots via email. Also, users can't send a SMS to multiple contacts as iPhone has no option for that either. iPhone also lacks support for voice-recognition that allows users to dial verbally. Here again BlackBerry Storm takes the lead, the phone supports voice dialing feature.

Storm lets users edit documents
	For those who depend on their phones for presentations, BlackBerry Storm is a good buyout. Storm comes preloaded with DataViz Documents to Go suite for editing Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents from the handset. However, iPhone only lets users view their documents with no option for editing Microsoft Office applications.

Coming soon: BlackBerry App Store
	RIM is all set to take on the Apple iPhone with the launch of its own application store. Recently, RIM announced its plans to come up with an app store next year that will let users download apps on their de