The great BlackBerry face-off

The BlackBerry Storm, the first touch-screen smartphone from Canada's Research in Motion, has been hailed the most formidable challenger yet to Apple's iPhone.

And at first sight that certainly seems to be the case as both have much in common – not least, of course, their touch-screens.

But BlackBerry subscribers – all 25 million of them around the world – form a huge and intensely loyal market of their own. Once you've experienced the trademark email integration, ease of use and all-round ability of a BlackBerry there's simply no alternative.

So I reckon the Storm's true rival in the marketplace is not in fact the iPhone but something much closer to home – that other feature-packed top-end BlackBerry, the Bold.

Users who are considering upgrading will be deciding whether to go for the Storm or the Bold, while many who are thinking about buying their first BlackBerry will be wondering which one to choose. To help them decide we've pitched the two models against each other to discover which is best.

Make no mistake, both are powerful and impressive devices. They have many features in common – push email, internet on the move, instant messaging and so on – but we'll concentrate
on the elements that set them apart.

In terms of handling, the Storm is slightly smaller than the Bold but weighs a little more. The Storm, with its big touch-screen, shiny black front and brushed aluminium back looks more modern than the Bold with its leather-bound backplate. But the Bold is nevertheless attractive and comfortable to hold and carry. The most significant practical difference is, surprisingly, not the Storm's touch-screen as such but rather the models' respective keyboards. The Bold's keyboard is a triumph of design and function. The keys look impossibly small but they are designed in an ingenious way that enables you to key in emails, SMSs and other text quickly and accurately.

The same cannot be said of the Storm. The virtual keyboard can be set up to work in different ways but none of them gives you the speed and accuracy that the Bold offers. If you hold the accelerometer-equipped Storm horizontally you are presented with a full QWERTY keyboard, but I found that I kept pressing the wrong key. The best of the keyboard options when the phone is held upright, Multi-tap, produced fewer typos but was still slower than the Bold's keyboard. This is a serious flaw given that the BlackBerry's reputation has been built on its e-mail capabilities.

The Storm's screen is of a new type that RIM has dubbed "clickable". It's designed to actually move when you press it, providing physical feedback when you select an application, menu item or whatever. When you touch, say, the contacts icon the icon turns blue, and when you press down, or click, the list appears.

With the Bold you move between icons or through menus and lists using a little trackball, which you press to select an option. Both systems work well, though here again the Bold has the edge. The Storm's set-up is a little imprecise – when you're scrolling through, say, a list of e-mails and select one to read, it is all too easy to press the one above or below.

Both models have attractively bright and sharp displays, but the larger size of the Storm's one gives the touch-screen model a clear advantage when viewing photos or video, reading e-mail and surfing the net.

There are a number of other differences between the models – for example, the Bold supports WiFi while the Storm does not. On the other hand the Storm has a 3.2 megapixel camera while the Bold has a paltry 2MP.

So which one to choose? The Bold is a seriously sorted device, the result of years of intensive development. It is so intuitive to use that even people who don't like gadgets (heresy, I know) can pick it up and operate it instantly.

But the Storm is not at that stage – attractive and impressive though it is, the fact that it is RIM's first attempt at a touch-screen phone shows, particularly with the keyboard. And it lacks the Bold's intuitive quality.

In view of this, if I were buying a top-end BlackBerry right now I would opt for the Bold. But touch-screen is clearly the way ahead for smartphones and I suspect that someone facing the same buying decision in a couple of years, when updated and improved models will have appeared, would choose the touch-screen option. But meanwhile my advice would be to forget the imperfect Storm. 

- The Bold is available with etisalat and du while the Storm is currently only available with etisalat.

 BlackBerry Bold 9000

Size: 114 x 66 x 15 mm

 Weight: 136g

Display: Half VGA 480 x 320 pixel transmissive TFT LCD, supports over 65,000 colours

Navigation and data input: QWERTY keyboard and trackball

Features: 2MP camera with flash and video recording, media player, GPS and BlackBerry Maps, wireless e-mail, organiser, browser, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

Price: Dh2,999 plus monthly data package.

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