The blackberry storm was released today. It features a brand new kind of touch screen that gives a tactile "click" feel when you press a button. I was skeptical about this on launch, as I'm sure anyone who reads this or has read about it is. Well, I tried the Blackberry Storm today at my local Verizon store and the screen is simply AMAZING.
It's a really simple concept, actually. Rather than having a screen that reads a user's selections by the presence of a finger, the screen has a sort of rocker device built into it, so that when you press something on the screen, the screen moves down and clicks, kind of like a mouse button. I know, it sounds weird, but it works gloriously well.
A big part of the appeal to this design is that it mimics the function of a mouse so much better than a standard touch screen. Unlike other touch screens, you don't select something just by touching it. That is to say, you can move your finger around all over the screen, highlighting different features in a menu, or across the digital keyboard, but you won't actually send the selection to the phone until you push down and actually "click" it.
There is no doubt in my mind that this is absolutely the best implementation of a touch screen on any phone (or any other device, for that manner), ever. Period. Go try it out, and you'll be wondering why no other phone has adapted to this method yet. It seriously blows everything else out of the water.
So why is this article about how to RUIN that glorious touch screen? Because...
IT'S FREAKING SLOW.
Like, really slow. As in, when you browse a website and scroll left or right to view the rest of the page that doesn't fit on the screen, you have to wait for all of the images to load for that section, again. Even if you already loaded the whole page. The phone is so slow that it can't even scroll smoothly accross CNET.com's home page.
It's as if the damned thing is running off of a Gerbil or something. ...and that's a damned shame, because, as I mentioned above, this is the best freaking touch screen device to ever be created by the human race.
Oh well, I suppose we can all pray for a firmware update so that it will actually be bearable.
