TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Both Engadget and Gizmodo have published their Blackberry Storm reviews.

Engadget’s review

Gizmodo’s review

Joshua Topolsky on the Storm’s OS:

The difference in 4.7 is not a paradigmatic shift away from this approach, rather, the company has added touch and multitouch functionality to take the place of trackball movements. What this means is that unlike the iPhone, which is most certainly the closest competitor on the market to this phone, the Storm’s UI is not custom built for touch navigation — touch navigation is added after the fact. Things which flow naturally on an iPhone — flicking through lists, scrolling for a contact, moving around in a webpage or looking through photos — feel inelegant and uncomfortable on the Storm.

And on its screen and keyboard:

The slant from RIM’s PR on the Storm is that the new clickable touchscreen delivers another high caliber typist’s dream to their roster — but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather than the click making things easier, it actually makes them more difficult. As you press down to engage a “key,” you’re required to release before moving to another, which means that you can only type so quickly. In our tests, we were constantly frustrated by the staggering, laggy movement when trying to type with any speed. You have to let the click depress before you can strike another character, and that makes for a stuttery input process.

Gizmodo makes similar complaints about the keyboard, pointing out that although the screen depresses, providing some tactile feeling, it is irrelevant when using the keyboard because you still don’t know what key you’re pressing. So the end result is that it takes more effort to type on the screen, with no benefit, because it provides no more feedback than the iPhone screen does.

In fact, both reviewers note that the Storm’s key highlighting is much less effective than the iPhone’s method, making the key grow in size above your finger.