I’ve been playing around with my iTouch for over a month now, appreciating it more and more every day. On Friday, I bought myself the new Blackberry storm from Verizon.

The bad:

1. The on screen keyboard isn’t effective.
While I like the tactile feedback, the keyboard is cramped. The key you are hovering over is highlighted (to allow you to make a correction before entering the key), but the keyboard is so crammed that the highlighted key is hidden underneath your finger.

2. The keyboard is often in the way and is hard to dismiss.
When using the keyboard, it often dominates the screen real estate, not allowing you to see what you are working on.

3. The UI navigation and accelerometer is sluggish.
There always seems to be a second or 2 lag before applications are opened. Furthermore, switching between landscape and portrait mode usually takes a couple seconds.

4. Commands are often 2 clicks away.
Many of the apps hide common commands away in the application menu. When sending an sms message for example, you have to open the file menu, and then select send message … instead of being able to quickly send the message with one button.

5. No wifi
I’m really puzzled by this. When data is unlimited, I don’t see the motivation to disallow users to use their own bandwidth instead of that of the Verizons

The good

1. Having a 3.2 Mpx camera is sweet!

2. GPS navigation from wireless is fast, accurate, and well designed.

3. The email application is better than the iPhone app.
Emails are consistently cached locally for quick and speedy retreival off or online, while the iPhones messages are rarely cached locally.