Blackberry Storm 2 9520 touchscreen smartphone

We rather like the music player layout, with its understated graphics. Music sounds surprisingly full-bodied through the supplied headphones, though you can easily switch them using the 3.5mm jack plug or stereo Bluetooth connection. MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA files are all supported and, like RIM’s other recent release, the Bold 9700, it comes with a 2GB microSD card.

Improved handling and Includes the features that should have been in the original version

Available exclusively from Vodafone to begin with, this first edition of the Storm2 features Vodafone Music, which offers over 1.6 million MP3 or AAC+ tracks available for £5 a month, or you can buy them separately for between 48p and 99p with albums for a fiver. There's no FM radio though.

There's GPS on board with the fairly basic Blackberry Maps and it quickly found our north London location. Points to RIM for persevering with its Maps option, but it's so far behind Google in terms of aesthetics and features, it's hard to see how it will ever rival it.

For battery life, the Storm 2's specs suggest that it offers a little less than the original Storm, promising up to 12.5 days of standby and five hours of talk time. In practice though, we noticed little difference, getting a little under a day and a half of moderate to heavy use out of it – not great, but not really a disaster either, compared with similarly spec’d smart phones.

Verdict

We weren't entirely convinced by the original Storm, but the Storm2 has gone a long way to correct our reservations. The new multi-touch screen is certainly an improvement, though the clicking action won't win everyone over, and Wi-Fi is an essential that really shouldn't have been left out in the first place. We have a few concerns about the browser regarding speed and page resolution, and we really wish the Qwerty keyboard buttons could be just a smidgeon bigger, but otherwise it's a quality touch screen contender. ®

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