BlackBerry Storm 9500 - 1 GB - Black (Unlocked) Smartphone

I like the design,the screen is clear and bright, I like the fact that the touch screen requires you to actually push it, this stops accidental selection of items, I dont like that the screen is not completely accurate or it could be that I that I have big fingers and this causes problems, learned to compensate and rarely get a mis selection while using touch screen now.
Camera quality ok, like its image capture funtion, video fine, display good, media centre works well.
I bought this primarily to use the internet on and its good for that, using it for a lot more as well.
Loads of apps/accessories available and if you buy second hand not too expensive, way cheaper than an iphone. Easy to unlock, cost me a few pounds, teamed to 02 simlicity pay as you go to get blackberry services, 300 mins to any phone, free text unlimited texts and 1gb dataOverall Iam happy with this phone, looks good and easy to use. Good way to get a decent smart phone for little money.

The latest BlackBerry is a slim but weighty touch-screen phone.

It differs from other touch-screen handsets in that the entire screen is a big button - you can select items using touch alone, but they are activated only by clicking the screen. This is hard to get used to at first, and the fact that the screen wobbles from side to side when you slide your thumb across it is disconcerting. With no seal around the screen's edge, we're concerned that even a splash of liquid could have serious consequences.

The Storm supports 3G and HSDPA networks but, surprisingly, not WiFi. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash and a built-in GPS receiver. The latter comes with a six-month trial of Vodafone's Find & Go satnav application, which includes turn-by-turn directions and costs £5 per month once the trial ends. There's support for multiple email protocols including BlackBerry's own service and Microsoft Exchange. You can view and edit office documents and PDF files, but for more advanced features, such as word count and spellchecking, you'll need to upgrade to the Premium version for $70 (around £46).

The phone comes with a suite of applications installed, and an Application Center lists further software you can download, such as IM clients, Google Maps and Facebook. It's not exactly a wide selection compared with what's on offer at the iPhone App Store or Google's Android Market. It may be early days, but RIM already has a lot of catching up to do.

The onscreen keyboard changes instantly when you change the phone's orientation. With the phone upright, you get two letters per key, and the predictive software offers word choices as you type. This isn't very good for entering names or passwords, however. For that, you need to turn the phone on its side to access the full QWERTY keyboard. This has relatively large keys, but it's a little fussy about how you press them, and we found ourselves making numerous errors.

Overall, we weren't impressed with the touch-screen interface. Besides the fussy keyboard, the touch-and-click mechanism is inconsistent. Sometimes when trying to click a button we succeeded only in magnifying the screen. At other times we found we'd opened an application by mistake. Selecting the right option on menus is hard, and editing a document is a nightmare as there's no fine control of the cursor position. However, we liked the way it saves web page requests for later if no network connection is currently available.

One of the Storm's saving graces is its battery life, which is far better than those of other touch-screen models we've seen. The innovative touch-and-click interface has potential, but it needs improving. Long-term BlackBerry users may have the patience to get used to it, but as a competitor to the iPhone, it falls flat

Touch screen is excellent, very sensitive. camera is alot better than i expected, and not much worse than the 5mp one i had previously on my c902. However the internet is not compatable with the pay as you go sin card from vodafone, so if you want one either go for contract or not vodafone. texting is very very easy and comfortable. the signal strength is good and the screen is very easy to read large documents on as it is a very large size and has a good high resolution. the phone is rather weighty, but this means that the phone feels very exclusive and well made. the screen does have a slightly irritating wobble due to the click feature, but this is a minor thing and should not put you off the phone. I decided to buy one off ebay second hand because it was going cheap and is a much better phone than the onthers which were going for much more money. Basically I love my blackberry and would throughly recomend one to any of my mates.

Noticed some problem what i think is part of the blackberry family.
All my berry's keep freeze down and slow down....
This phone has no wifi but hey its capable to communicate at speed 7.6 mb what pretty good...
I had connected to my pc and search the web and i find like double time faster than my o2 or three usb dongle.(sad thing is ur mobile company rip u off if u using it...)
The screen rotating with the keyboard nicely.
Batter hold for a bit.
Got some nice apps....
Not a bad looking phone but i find a bit heavy!!!!
Overall worth to buy if u can get one cheap!!!!!

Over the years ive had numerous phones and ive had my fair share of Blackberrys,ive always enjoyed my time with blackberry phones apart from this one, although is it a size for your hand and it has all the same features of other blackberrys apart from wifi but it does have gps, the screen is clear and a good size but it lets this phone down, the screen acts as a touchscreen but to make a selection you have to press the screen in as its a button screen, i found this made you make mistakes when trying to write a text or just make a selection, the screen is loose and moves from left to right and up and down and i found this terrible to work with, the top and bottom of the Blackberry 9500 is if you can try before you buy otherwise steer clear.