AdamStout^.com

Earlier this week I plugged my BlackBerry Storm into my computer to charge it and I was prompted to upgrade the new 5.0 BlackBerry OS from the 4.7 version I was currently running.  I haven't been to thrilled about the speed of my Storm or the stability of it so I figured an upgrade couldn't hurt.

I'm pretty impressed.  Highlights include:

• Stability - It has only been a few days, but I haven't had any crashes (which seemed to happen about once a week before).
• Speed - Switching between screens is faster now
• Looks - While not super important, the transitions look better than they did before
• Gestures - I haven't played with this too much but scrolling is much better.  It looks smoother and is more sensitive to your speed (particularly in scrolling).  This may have been iPhone inspired, but better is better.

I believe that the OS is the same as what is shipping on the new Storm 2 which seemed a little better than my original version when I played with it at the store.  The new Storm has Wi-Fi which is something I would like but I'm not sure it is worth the extra $150.  I was leaning toward it though based on the more stable OS.  Now that I have the new OS on my old Storm, I'm thinking the $50 price tag on the old Storm is pretty good.

If you haven't upgraded your Storm, I recommend doing so ASAP.  One word of warning, it took a while to do the upgrade (about an hour) but I think most of that was due to my internet connection and the download of all the packages.  The installation itself though did take a decent amount of time so don't do it right before you need to leave.