BlackBerry Storm 9530, Tested and Burned In

Often, smartphones are significantly slanted towards either business or consumer use. The BlackBerry Storm offers a good blend of both, making it perfect for the business user who wants a fun device or the general consumer who wants serious organizational and email functionality along with multimedia capabilities. The phone offers standard organization functions as well as a variety of communications technologies to keep the business user connected to the office. It also offers plenty of multimedia features for entertainment as well.

Business users will appreciate that the phone incorporates BlackBerry’s renowned email capabilities. The Storm also supports BlackBerry Enterprise Server for over-the-air synchronization with business accounts. Any time you need to edit a Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file, you’ll be able to do so from the device thanks to DataViz’ Documents To Go. With 1GB of on-board memory and an 8GB microSD flash card, there is plenty of storage space for all of your important documents as well as numerous multimedia files.

The Storm can also serve as a high-speed modem to provide Internet access on your laptop. Because the phone supports Verizon Wireless’ Global Phone and Global Email services, you’ll stay connected regardless of your location.

When you’re off the clock and ready for some downtime, the Storm’s media player lets you watch movies and view pictures and slideshows in full-screen mode. There’s also a 3.2MP camera with video recording capabilities, flash, variable zoom, and image stabilization to help you capture memories. The camera takes pretty decent pictures, though serious photographers will still appreciate the optics found only in a standalone camera.

Email doesn’t have to be strictly for business on the Storm. In addition to catering to business email accounts, the Storm has no problem connecting to a variety of personal email accounts from providers such as Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail. Setup is relatively easy, as well: In just a few taps, we had a Hotmail account set up on the device with an icon to access the messages directly from the home screen.

BrickBreaker and Word Mole are the only two games that are preloaded on the device. A popular game that many users are sure to recognize, BrickBreaker makes use of the phone’s clickable touchscreen, allowing you to click to launch a ball and then slide your finger across the screen to move the paddle.

Word Mole may remind some people of a spin-off of a crossword puzzle. The object of the game is to form words using the letters that are found in a “garden.” As you form words, new letters appear. To challenge you, “holes” will appear within the garden as dead spaces that make it harder to form new words. You must complete a certain number of words in order to move on to the next level before the time expires.

The Storm also features VZ Navigator with traffic data to help you find your way to a meeting or entertainment spot. While navigating, the software provides turn by turn voice instructions with spoken street names. VZ Navigator also offers local search capabilities as well as movie and event listings and weather reports.

Many of the applications within the Application Center target consumers. Here, you’ll find download links to install applications such as V CAST music, Flickr, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, MySpace, and Facebook. Once these applications have been installed, you’ll find them by opening the Applications icon from the main menu.