BlackBerry has a neat little application which allows you to upload photos directly from your phone to Flickr. This is pretty cool in itself, but there's another app which allows you to take a screenshot and then upload that to Flickr if you so desire.
All you have to do to get the Capture It app is visit: http://m.techmogul.com from your BlackBerry Storm 2, Tour or other device. Download and install the application, and it adds a Capture It option to the menu screen.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
BlackBerry Storm 2 Screen Capture
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Blackberry Storm2 Video Quality
This is a quick video taken with my BlackBerry Storm 2 showing the quality of video and audio from the device. Notice how it handles the transition through the different lighting.
Here's the YouTube version for full-quality...
Monday, November 16, 2009
BlackBerry Storm2 | JVM Error 523
Today, my Storm2 came up with a white screen and small lettering in the middle that said: "JVM error 523"
What the??? I was totally confused. I couldn't shut the phone off, clicking the screen did nothing and I was at a loss. I removed the battery, SIM card and media chip to no avail. I looked on the Internet, but there was nothing specific to the Storm2.
Underneath the error message was a very small phrase that said 'click here.' I finally clicked it multiple times, and the phone re-booted. Everything came back up, and things returned to normal. I hope that helps.
Review | BlackBerry Tour vs BlackBerry Storm2 | Which One Should I Buy?
"If you like gadgets, get the Storm2... If you need to get down to business, get the tour."
After scouring the Internet looking for the answer to the question above and not finding anything decisive, I decided to write an opinion of my own.
I purchased the BlackBerry Tour 9630 from Verizon Wireless on October 15th, about two weeks prior to the release of the BlackBerry Storm2 9550, so the Storm2 wasn't a consideration at first.
Three weeks into my journey with the Tour, I started hearing funny noises coming from the speaker on the side of the phone. It was popping and crackling even when everything was turned off, so I decided to exchange it for another Tour. When I went into the store, I noticed the newly released Storm2 and mentioned it to the salesperson. She promptly told me that I could get it for the price difference between the two phones. Boy did that get me thinking!
I deliberated the Storm2 for a few minutes while I waited for my new Tour to be brought on line, but the store was about 10 minutes from closing, and the demo model had a large zip tie that prevented me from being able to interact with the phone. After that, and not knowing what to expect, I decided to stay with the Tour.
The minute I got my second Tour, I was frustrated by a sticky menu button that had an annoying loud click when pushed. After spending nearly half a grand on a phone, I was at a point where those little annoyances weren't going to be acceptable, so I began researching the Storm2 in earnest that evening.
You may be thinking that the Tour isn't even worth it, but I want to back up a bit and talk about the phone's nuances. I'm not the only one in my household with a Tour, because my wife purchased her Tour right before I did.
Because the Tour was my first BlackBerry, I was impressed with its capabilities. Not only could I stay up on my e-mail, but I was always within reach of most of the Internet. Getting use to the trackball really didn't take long at all, and the phone is easily customizable.
Using the keypad takes a little getting use to, but it's not difficult for any veteran text pro. BlackBerry messages only require you to press the enter key to send, but text and e-mail messages require a couple clicks of the trackball in order to get them on their way. E-mails are the same: click the trackball when you're ready to send, and then click "Send."
Overall, the user experience is quite enjoyable. The only thing you end up wanting is a larger screen. The camera takes shots decent enough to use as desktop backgrounds for your computer, and the phone itself has good sound quality in both handset and speaker modes. Pair it up with a BlueTooth handsfree device, and you've got a winning combination. The voice recognition technology on board the phone does a great job of figuring out who it is you're trying to call so long as you ask for the name exactly as it appears in your address book. So why didn't I keep the Tour you ask? Call it somewhat of a leap of faith.
Interacting with touchscreen devices brings about a pretty swift love/hate relationship, and it's just this parity that makes the Tour a good phone for some users and the Storm2 a good phone for others. Take my wife for example. She had some jealous pangs when she first saw my shiny new Storm2, but those quickly faded after she tried it. She's a smart girl: her position within her company puts her in front of a computer for about 10 hours or more a day, so she's constantly having to battle computer glitches and issues. Computers and phones are devices used in the course of doing work, and she doesn't seek out technology for anything other than simple entertainment. The equipment itself is a means to an end; not an end in itself. After fumbling around with my phone for about 10 minutes, she was pretty much over the touchscreen experience. As she said, "If it's not easy for me to use the first time, then I'm done."
For me, gadgets are a way of life. When the iPhone first came out, I just about wet myself with excitement. Its features and capabilities were so outside the realm of normal experience that any true tech lover had to be beside themselves with butterflies at the thought. Unfortunately, Apple and AT&T made the device captive to one network, which put it off limits to me. All of my family members are on Verizon, so the iPhone sat at the outer edges of possibility for me. I did own one briefly for a couple of months, but had to let it go after seeing that first bill.
Fast forward a couple of years, and the iPhone isn't the only touchscreen on the market. BlackBerry's first version of the Storm was not a complete success, and it had the look of something rushed to market before its time. I've heard the new OS on the Storm addresses a lot of issues many users had with the phone, so it wasn't a complete failure. I have to say that the Storm2 is a completely different animal.
I'm a magazine editor, so I spend a large amount of time dealing with e-mails that have attachments. I get Word docs, PDF's and photos almost every day, and being able to interact with those documents on my phone is a real improvement over being tied to a laptop computer for those tasks. On the Tour, I had access to all of my documents, but I have to say that the Storm2 just makes it all that much better.
I got my Storm2 two days ago... I already think it's far better than the Tour in the way I interact with it. Typing, navigating and using its touch interfaces makes tedious trackball tasks a thing of the past.
I purchased the BlackBerry Tour 9630 from Verizon Wireless on October 15th, about two weeks prior to the release of the BlackBerry Storm2 9550, so the Storm2 wasn't a consideration at first.
Three weeks into my journey with the Tour, I started hearing funny noises coming from the speaker on the side of the phone. It was popping and crackling even when everything was turned off, so I decided to exchange it for another Tour. When I went into the store, I noticed the newly released Storm2 and mentioned it to the salesperson. She promptly told me that I could get it for the price difference between the two phones. Boy did that get me thinking!
I deliberated the Storm2 for a few minutes while I waited for my new Tour to be brought on line, but the store was about 10 minutes from closing, and the demo model had a large zip tie that prevented me from being able to interact with the phone. After that, and not knowing what to expect, I decided to stay with the Tour.
The minute I got my second Tour, I was frustrated by a sticky menu button that had an annoying loud click when pushed. After spending nearly half a grand on a phone, I was at a point where those little annoyances weren't going to be acceptable, so I began researching the Storm2 in earnest that evening.
You may be thinking that the Tour isn't even worth it, but I want to back up a bit and talk about the phone's nuances. I'm not the only one in my household with a Tour, because my wife purchased her Tour right before I did.
Because the Tour was my first BlackBerry, I was impressed with its capabilities. Not only could I stay up on my e-mail, but I was always within reach of most of the Internet. Getting use to the trackball really didn't take long at all, and the phone is easily customizable.
Using the keypad takes a little getting use to, but it's not difficult for any veteran text pro. BlackBerry messages only require you to press the enter key to send, but text and e-mail messages require a couple clicks of the trackball in order to get them on their way. E-mails are the same: click the trackball when you're ready to send, and then click "Send."
Overall, the user experience is quite enjoyable. The only thing you end up wanting is a larger screen. The camera takes shots decent enough to use as desktop backgrounds for your computer, and the phone itself has good sound quality in both handset and speaker modes. Pair it up with a BlueTooth handsfree device, and you've got a winning combination. The voice recognition technology on board the phone does a great job of figuring out who it is you're trying to call so long as you ask for the name exactly as it appears in your address book. So why didn't I keep the Tour you ask? Call it somewhat of a leap of faith.
Interacting with touchscreen devices brings about a pretty swift love/hate relationship, and it's just this parity that makes the Tour a good phone for some users and the Storm2 a good phone for others. Take my wife for example. She had some jealous pangs when she first saw my shiny new Storm2, but those quickly faded after she tried it. She's a smart girl: her position within her company puts her in front of a computer for about 10 hours or more a day, so she's constantly having to battle computer glitches and issues. Computers and phones are devices used in the course of doing work, and she doesn't seek out technology for anything other than simple entertainment. The equipment itself is a means to an end; not an end in itself. After fumbling around with my phone for about 10 minutes, she was pretty much over the touchscreen experience. As she said, "If it's not easy for me to use the first time, then I'm done."
For me, gadgets are a way of life. When the iPhone first came out, I just about wet myself with excitement. Its features and capabilities were so outside the realm of normal experience that any true tech lover had to be beside themselves with butterflies at the thought. Unfortunately, Apple and AT&T made the device captive to one network, which put it off limits to me. All of my family members are on Verizon, so the iPhone sat at the outer edges of possibility for me. I did own one briefly for a couple of months, but had to let it go after seeing that first bill.
Fast forward a couple of years, and the iPhone isn't the only touchscreen on the market. BlackBerry's first version of the Storm was not a complete success, and it had the look of something rushed to market before its time. I've heard the new OS on the Storm addresses a lot of issues many users had with the phone, so it wasn't a complete failure. I have to say that the Storm2 is a completely different animal.
I'm a magazine editor, so I spend a large amount of time dealing with e-mails that have attachments. I get Word docs, PDF's and photos almost every day, and being able to interact with those documents on my phone is a real improvement over being tied to a laptop computer for those tasks. On the Tour, I had access to all of my documents, but I have to say that the Storm2 just makes it all that much better.
I got my Storm2 two days ago... I already think it's far better than the Tour in the way I interact with it. Typing, navigating and using its touch interfaces makes tedious trackball tasks a thing of the past.
"Interacting with touchscreen devices brings about a pretty swift love/hate relationship..."
The Storm2 has three different keyboards to choose from; a full qwerty keyboard with the familiar layout; a multi-tap keyboard like those on most phone pads, and a SureType keyboard which has a qwerty layout with two letters per button instead of one. Even though it freaked me out at first, I've really fallen for the SureType keyboard because I can type like a fool! As long as you trust the phone to understand the correct word, you'll have very few problems. Small nuances (annoyances) of the keyboard come out as you type weird letter combinations it doesn't recognize. But if you take the time, the phone learns these words as you type and gives them to you next time around. Almost all normal words come out clean the first time. After about a day of playing with my Storm2, I was typing two or three times faster than with the physical keyboard of my Tour, and this was after almost a month of using it.
One of my favorite features of the touchscreen is that you can access almost anything you see just by touching it. On the Tour, if you'd like to manage connections such as BlueTooth or Network settings, you have to press the Menu key in order to access the home folder. After that, you have to click on the Manage Connections icon before you can begin playing with settings. On the Storm2, those features can be clicked from the Home screen. Just press on the icons and the Manage Connections screen pops up. The touchscreen eliminates multiple navigational requirements of the physical keyboard/trackball.
Unlike the iPhone, the screen of the Storm2 actually clicks as you press it. Some people think it's annoying, but I have to say that the split second between selecting a screen element and clicking to choose has prevented me from making many mistakes. You can confidently select anything on the screen without choosing it so long as you don't press the screen all the way. Because it uses electric switches in each of the four corners to give feedback, the click pressure is potentially programmable. I personally think the screen requires too much pressure to click while typing, but I'm confident a future software update will allow for adjustment. This is not a deal breaker however, just something to look forward to.
So should you buy a BlackBerry Storm2 or Tour? It comes down to how you use your gadgets. If you just want something to work the way you expect it to without having to learn the little nuances of the device, then the Tour is for you. On the other hand, if you like to spend time with your gadgets, and are willing to take the time necessary to learn its nuances, you will be richly rewarded with a user experience par excellence.
After using my Storm2 for two days, I picked up my wife's Tour. In just a few seconds, I found myself pressing on the screen in order to select the browser. I set it down and grabbed my Storm2. I'd never go back to the physical keyboard. When I don't need it, the keyboard disappears so I have more real estate to play with. The screen is not just a simple output device as it is on the Tour. For me, the Storm2 blows the Tour out of the water in both performance, features and productivity. If you like gadgets, get the Storm2. If you like to get down to business, get the Tour.
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