BlackBerry Storm's Keyboard Disappoints

Thanks to the SurePress display, typing feels surprisingly natural on the Storm, and messaging fiends have two choices when it comes to entering text. In Portrait mode, the Storm displays the SureType layout found on BlackBerry Pearls, which crams two letters on multiple keys. It's best for typing with one hand, and we found it worked well, especially since RIM has improved its spelling suggestion system.

When you use the Storm in landscape mode you'll see a full QWERTY keyboard. In this mode we could type accurately but only if we were relatively slow and deliberate when using our thumbs. Picking up speed drastically--as if typing on a BlackBerry Curve--reduced accuracy. More troubling is the fact that the keyboard got stuck a few times over a day's use, where it would momentarily not register our presses.

We have one other nitpick: The keyboard gets in the way when entering text on a Web page or in applications like VZ Navigator. Swiping down on the screen is supposed to make the keyboard disappear, but this action doesn't always take. We'd much prefer an OK or Done button to hide the QWERTY.

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