The two questions asked most about the Verizon BlackBerry Storm are, “When is it coming out?”, and “How much will it cost?” Today Verizon answered both of those questions by announing that the BlackBerry Storm is coming out next Friday, Nov. 21st and that it will cost $199.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two year service plan.
I think most people are somewhere between, “It is about time” and “These will be the longest 8 days of my life”, when it comes to the release date. What I want to know, on the other hand, is how do you feel about the price?
Your out of pocket price is still 50 bucks more than the iPhone though you will get the $50 rebate if you can remember to send it in. Most people don’t… My guess is that having to pay 25% more up front won’t matter much to people buying the Storm in Verizon Stores. There will be no iPhone sitting right next to them.
When it comes to big retailers like Best Buy, however, I am not so sure. $50 is enough to to make a consumer pause when comparing Storm to the iPhone which they will undoubtedly do. I still think that there is a chance for some type of instant rebate to bring that out of pocket cost down below $200.
What do you think?
I would argue the price is cheaper for a 16GB version of Storm if you go on ebay/amazon and buy a memory card for around $70. (And then if you wanted you could sell the 8GB card that comes in the box to further reduce price) The MIR issue is moot in my opinion – people will look at the net cost. I would love to see Vodafone type pricing, but the $199 seems very fair. I am pretty sure I will break my ATT contract to get this device with Verizon – even though I hate VZ’s policies. The upside is that the VZ network is top notch.
I heard that Best Buy is going to carry this for $299 with a $100 instant rebate.
I haven’t even heard that Best Buy is carrying the BlackBerry Storm. Are you sure you are refering to the BlackBerry Bold?
I’d consider it if it wasn’t on Verizon, sure they’ve got ‘the network’, but they’ve also got some of the most expensive plans around. And the most hamstrung phones.
Yes, Best Buy is caring the Storm. At least they better be since I have a $50 deposit stating I will get one come November 21st.
Great price, great phone, great network.
NEED I SAY MORE?
Now for the wait 🙂
Fair to me. Didn’t see it going lower, and would have been disappointed if it was any higher. Honestly, I would have paid $299 for it, but that wouldn’t exactly look good in the eyes of many who can pick up an iPhone for $199.
It’s competitive.
Is the Best Buy price the same as Verizon’s?
I think the price is reasonable, I would have been disapointed had it been higher. I also have a deposit at Best Buy, but that simply gives me the option of staying there or going to the Verizon store, whom ever will get me the best net price. Eight days won’t kill me, gosh been waiting since July, but it will seem like forever.
Is this the same price if we are already on a BB plan and need to upgrade to storm from bb curve??? I was to get hold of curve a few days before its launch by calling them but no luck with storm… I will call them up again and wonder how much they will charge me for that…
I don’t think about the pricing of it. If I wanted an I-phone I would buy one.
While I don’t like those rebate schemes, the pricing is good enough that VZW will not lose any sales to the iPhone because of it.
If someone really wants a Storm, I cannot see them going with the iPhone because of that $50 difference, which is made up in the rebate, after all.
All in all, I think we’re headed towards a pretty good release of a new BB for a change…good buzz buildup prior to launch, on time, plenty of inventory, good pricing, etc.
I think that the pricing is very, very fair! Considering that at&t is pushing the Bold out for $399 before rebates! But I’m real curious to see how it operates before really making a decision.
I was expecting very high of this storm but now I am not very sure about it, I hate it when verizon kills phones functionalities!
I think the pricing is very appealing. I’ve had my Curve on VZW for a couple months now and I just might pick up the Storm if I like once I get my hands on it.
While the VZW service prices are higher than most I have found their customer service top notch on the handful of times I have had to use it.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/09/24/att-to-potential-blackberry-storm-customers-storm-sucks-iphone-rulez/
“iPhone has many advantages over the Storm:
The Storm features a touchscreen but does not include Multi-Touch Technology. Multi-Touch on the iPhone 3G enhances the browsing, map and photo experience by enabling customers to zoom in and out in a single motion.
Apple’s App Store allows customers to customize the iPhone 3G by downloading 3rd party applications directly on their phone. Currently there are over 2500 applications, many for free and the selection continues to grow.
iPhone 3G is integrated with iTunes making it simple to sync your favorite albums, podcasts, movies, and TV shows to your phone to enjoy while you are on the go.
iPhone 3G has WiFi so that you can access high speed wireless networks. The Storm doesn’t have WiFi because Verizon wanted it crippled.
iPhone 3G has three bands of HSDPA which allow for high speed data access around the world.
iPhone features Maps with GPS and provides three location technologies to pinpoint your location – Cell tower, GPS, and Wifi, The iPhone has autonomous GPS without the need for the extra fee’s which Verizon charges for GPS use on it’s phones. aka Verizon again crippled the autonomous GPS, like they have done countless times before. http://www.planetfeedback.com/verizon+wireless+(cell+phones)/other/gps+feature+disabled+by+verizon/303085
https://www.rimarkable.com/what-does-verizon-have-against-gps-in-blackberrys
iPhone features rich HTML email that looks and works just like email on your computer.
Overall iPhone features ease of use from how you make a phone call with the tap of a finger, to viewing emails and attachments to browsing web pages with Safari – the best browser on a mobile device.
There are leaders and there are followers, Apple has proven time and time again you can’t out Apple, Apple and the iPhone. There are many copies but only one Original iPhone. Sadly for RIM, the Storm, and Blackberry customers Verizon’s crippling demands are sure to make the Storm less of a device than it could and should be.
As AT&T says “know the facts!”
Thank you hellno…I mean onoshedidnt.
bluehorseshoe wrong yet again. Sadly typical bluehorseshoe, off thread topic, while turning things personal too. Why not try to educate yourself instead of being hell-bent on proving your ignorance while also showing your desperate to ACT like your a big shot, oh that’s right “blackberry power user”?
Verizon Storm Pricing? over priced when it comes to comparing it to the iPhone (lucky for all of us bluehorseshoe yet again first brought up the iPhone in this thread. The same “power user” who offers to pay $100 dollars more than retail for a lame copy (with missing features) of the industry leader the Apple iPhone.
Verizon Storm Pricing? way over priced when it comes to facts that the Storm has crippled GPS and lacks WiFi, and still lacks native support for multiple operating systems.
As AT&T says “know the facts!”
Off Topic? Did you read what you posted vs. the topic of this thread? LOL…too funny. Thanks for the laugh. Back to my RFP now…
yeah I know, your excuses are tough when specific’s and facts are posted to show why verizon’s Storm pricing is over priced. Keep on laughing bluehorseshoe you can try, and fail again since the rest of us are laughing at you and your desperate fanboy ignorance. One of these days you just might learn others can post here with different opinions than yours, and that no one is looking for a childish personal come back from bluehorseshoe who feels he desperately needs to show he feels the only valid opinion is his. Nice try, but wrong again bluehorseshoe.
get a room…
We can argue till the cows come home on which device is better. At the end of the day you probably aren’t going to convince someone that thinks the iPhone is the greatest device ever that the BlackBerry Storm is better just like you aren’t going to convince a die-hard BlackBerry user that they should switch to the iPhone.
Apple and RIM, I am sure, will go at it for years to come when it comes to trying to be king of the hill when it comes to PDAs. To Apple’s credit, It came out on top in Q3. Now That RIM has come out with 3, about to be 4 new devices this quarter alone, my money is on them for Q4.
As for the question asked when I wrote this post. $199 sounded pretty good to me until I found out that my Verizon corporate plan administrator negotiated an additional $100 discount bringing the price down to $99.99 through November 28th.
I would be willing to bet the other corporate BlackBerry users might be privy to to similar discounts.
The one thing people are NOT covering is the cost of the service plans. Verizon has the most expensive data plans in North America. Compare the cost of owning 3G service with AT&T versus similar service with Verizon and the price of the Storm or any Verizon ‘smart’ phone is almost 3X as expensive. It’s like the iPod… there are better PMPs on the market with more features and even look better, but iTunes makes the iPod the easiest to use. Just count the bazillion iPod/iPhone users out there if you wish to argue. It’s not because they love Apple (well, probably a lot of them do) it’s because iTunes just works.
My $0.02
Rob $99 is ok however when you compare it to verizon’s daddy, Vodaphone giving away the Storm FREE with a 18 month contract it seems again (not comparing it to the iPhone) even $99, $199 isn’t much of a deal.
The BlackBerry Storm pricing starts from free on a two year contract at £35 per month on a Best for Text plan that will include 600 minutes and unlimited texts*
*subject to fair usage of 3,000 texts a month, see http://www.vodafone.co.uk for additional pricing details
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/11/14/blackberry-storm-now-available-on-vodafone.html
Exactly ASJ,
And when you factor in the crippling (obmission) of 3G radio’s, WiFi, and the typical crippling of the Storm’s autonomous GPS: Forcing the consumer to use verizon’s EVDO (when free, quicker and sometimes more secure WiFi is available)
Forcing the consumer to use verizon’s navigation service for a extra fee to use the GPS
Rejecting consumers the use of 3G services when the consumer is roaming.
All add up to the consumer getting charged more for a “smartphone” which offers less. Joe and Jane consumer might be fooled by not knowing the facts. However those here at RIMarkable should know and understand the facts. The question is why the desperate need to make excuses for the facts instead of forcing positive change for both RIM and consumers.
To say nothing about ease of use and Apple elegance.
Indeed onoshedidnt.
2 Reviews I am waiting for: to read what Robb thinks, and to read what bluehorseshoe thinks about the device. If both of them gives a thumbs up, that’s a very good sign for RIM.
all i want is that the Storm is an efficient communication machine that works well, that has a smooth, stable, and quick interface. if it does that, i’m not worried at all. it’ll sell fine. if not, then rim has problems.
i’m happy to give apple and the iphone all the props with their “ease and elegance”, but i’ll also say RIM has a better communication platform. the network control over the device and data compression are among the advantages. at&t can’t be too happy with how bandwidth intensive those new iphones are!
so if RIM delivers their normal stable device that just works, and apple just keeps what they are doing, they’ll both sell tons of devices and they’ll both serve millions and millions of customers. the miniscule amount of opinions on this board mean absolutely nothing and the associated personal attacks are a bad joke you f’ing morons.
crazylegs,
Lets “know the facts”
” but i’ll also say RIM has a better communication platform. the network control over the device and data compression are among the advantages” partially true until that “single network control” goes down causing complete outages. However the advantages of “device and data compression ” are not the advantage they once were prior to 3G networks and WiFi.
also please leave the myth’s at the door and speak with the facts, “at&t can’t be too happy with how bandwidth intensive those new iphones are!” The known facts from months ago show this is incorrect.
September 18, 2008
“The carrier expected a 5x growth in data consumption over the old iPhone, but it’s been closer to a 3x jump, AT&T (T) CTO John Donovan said this morning at a Goldman Sachs investor conference”
No sadly the “bad joke” is on all of us “f’ing morons” worse on those who make excuses why when RIM, and us continue to let verizon cripple and remove functions from smartphones. Allowing verizon to charge more and control how our smartphones are used. Sadly the obmission of some technologies on the Storm will not only bring extra charges to consumers but will also cost consumer in other ways.
Instead of making excuses, attacking others and proving ignorance why not use RIMarkable as a platform for change? Posting the truth and posting why the crippling and heavy handed actions by verizon (or any other Blackberry provider) are not acceptable to consumers and not acceptable for fans of the Blackberry wanting RIM to be able to freely design the Blackberry by pushing the technology and just not making a copy of a device almost 3 years later which falls short in comparison.
crazylegs, your right both Apple and probably RIM will sell tons of the devices However again as a RIM fan wouldn’t it be cool if RIM was able to make their new flagship Storm without a service provider calling the shots? Apple and the iPhone have proven that blocking carrier interference and control of the device is the path forward when it comes to smartphones. Apple has also in very short order proven a whole bunch of other things which they have improved when it comes to Smartphones. Taking any of that away and talking trash is ignorance. It’s good RIM has the Storm coming out, however one must be real, know the facts, and ask why RIM continues to allow it’s smartphone design to be controlled by a service provider making the device less than what it could be. Which by the way would be good for Apple, RIM, and consumers.
I agree that this argument about iPhone vs BlackBerry is rather pointless…it can be fun, much like debating sports topics, but if the discussion degenerates into personal attacks or insulting comments then something is wrong.
Bottom line: people are going to buy what they will, and both Apple and RIM will succeed and thrive. No doubt the Storm will have its strong points; I think their solution to tactile feedback on the virtual keyboard is positively inspired…it reminds me of something Apple would do. Rather than mess with other clumsy haptic technologies like other vendors, RIM went with an elegant solution that from all accounts seems to work better. In fact, ironically, Apple’s new laptop uses the same idea on their new laptops: their trackpad is one big button.
So kudos to both Apple and RIM, and let’s be glad we have both companies to push the technology envelope forward.
onoshewont – you have your facts wrong. that’s fine, we can disagree. compression does matter on the device side for battery life and on the network side for bandwidth usage. any device that uses less bandwidth per transmission provides a greater value proposition to the carrier. this is an indisputable fact. you can also use the fear tactic to talk about a single point of failure. obviously they have improved their resiliency in the network and having a QOS provider that guarantees delivery and controls that process is far superior to activesync. what’s funny to me is that my exchange server goes down periodically – far more than RIM’s network – so i guess your infrastructure is only as good as the weakest link. RIM has proven over time that they are a very strong link. and as far as carrier neutering goes, i agree that it’s BS that vz cripples their stuff. so, we’ll never be able to agree and that’s fine, but i’m just tired of the same old attacks back and forth when in reality they are meaningless and stupid.
crazylegs,
if your ” tired of the same old attacks back and forth when in reality they are meaningless and stupid.” Then why not take the high road and stop posting false information, and fail when it comes to knowing, posting and discussing the facts? You too are part of the problem you are complaining about. Never the less in time you may also learn to “know the facts” as AT&T says.
funny, neither did i attack anyone or post false information. compression will always matter in a resource finite environment. can this be disputed? no. RIM has a very reliable network. can this be disputed? no. case closed.
Well, just got back from a VZW store and they already started selling them. First 10 were out the door today, but I did get to play with the store model this evening. Also, the store wasn’t sure as to when the next shipment was coming in. They were hoping for Saturday based on the orders taken tomorrow. Again, they were out of stock and not expecting any tomorrow. Also…the tech came out of the back and had to perform a test on the device which was supposed to take 2 hours. He was asking store personnel if they noticed any error codes that popped up. Browser was also missing. Seems there was some updating to do at the last minute because he had to report the errors back.
First impression, it’ll take some time getting used to typing real fast. If I slowed down, it may not be as bad, but I was hitting some keys that were next to those I intended to hit. Not going to say it was an overall bad experience, but certainly not the same as typing on a Curve or Pearl. My biggest key error was hitting the space bar. When I was flying on the device, I noticed that I wasn’t hitting the key hard enough. Gave it more of a side thumb press and moved on to the next word. I’ll need to pay more attention to that space bar because that was approximately 50% of my errors…not separating the words. As for the letter, not much of a difference than typing on an iPhone, except you have the feedback. I also had an issue with some of the icons not executing even though I felt a click response. You do need to give it a good push down, but not sure why it varies when others executed with the same force. Seems like something that can be fixed via software. Plus it took a little time to open up some of the windows once you got the click. Nothing to go nuts about, I can wait the nano to one or two seconds.
The good…the picture/camera quality was very good, if not great, and the audio and video is certainly the best I’ve ever seen on such a small device. The audio blew me away. Video was right on with no skipping, delays, etc. Screen is fabulous. The device also has a solid build. You know it’s in your hand.
Overall, I’m going to proceed and purchase one. For $199, it’s worth it. There was enough good in the 15-20 minutes that I had with it to move forward.
PS – The store was also giving people the $50 rebate instantly if the consumer already qualified for it. I’m guessing it applies to existing VZW customers since a fellow customer and VZW user and myself were explaining that we were upgrading our phones and were eligible.
I fortunately am not in a dilemma between the iPhone and the Storm. I hate Apple products to begin with since every iPod or Apple product I’ve owned has been made with horrible quality. I simply would have to choose Verizon and the Storm because they are the only national service provider in my area except Alltel