Samantha's sixty seconds with the Storm

Tonight before we started dinner I showed the latest smart phone, the Blackberry Storm, to my wife as we waited for our meal at Johnny Rockets. Now Samantha is pretty tech savvy. She was able to pick up my iPhone and pretty much figure it out in her first five minutes with the device. But she is by no means an uber-nerd such as myself.

I actually liked the interface and the phone itself. The weight was a bit more to me that the iPhone but that wasn't all bad. It felt a little more comfortable in my hand than the iPhone. The owner of the phone was kind enough the share his opinion, and I paraphrase, "I have a phone that should still be in beta." But enough about us, here is what the non-tech thought:

Image via Wikipedia

Immediate frustration with click screen
She found the click screen difficult to use. This may be because she is used to my iPhone and was trying to do what she was accustomed to.

Found menu hard key quicker than me
Again a force of habit for myself, but she did find the menu hard key quicker than I did.

Found games and camera quickly
She was able to quickly find the games and the camera very quickly after she figured out the click was a physical push on the touchscreen.

Figured out how to email picture taken with camera
Samantha had no trouble emailing a picture taken with the camera (because she quickly figured out the menu hard key) and was able to email a picture she took.

Began to navigate quicker
As she got more comfortable with the touchscreen and UI she was able to navigate the device more fluidly.

Found audio and video
Easy enough.

Tried to pinch zoom
I noticed that when she was searching through the photo roll on the phone she was trying to pinch zoom. Another iPhone habit.

Played movie trailer successfully
She was able to play and then stop the playback of the movie trailer that was already downloaded on the phone.

Didn't like it
Was the brief response as our food got to the table. She felt the biggest problem was the click touchscreen and that "clicking was difficult" to do. In the end she preferred the iPhone's interface more than the Storm's.

And that was all I could get from her before she started into her burger and onion rings. At least the meal wasn't a loss!

Special thanks to @camaross for the use of his Storm!

http://www.blackberry.com/blackberrystorm/

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

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Brian
http://bmbufalo.blogspot.com
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