Blackberry takes mobile copy by Storm
November 21st, 2008Promoted by multi-million dollar media campaigns from Verizon Wireless (in the US) and Vodaphone (in Europe), reviewed by blogs such as engadget and Phone Scoop, compared to the iPhone by PC World magazine and hyped by an outlandish contest on Crackberry. The Crackberry nation is truly a craze, as can be witnessed on YouTube with contest videos entries like Paintball Storm, The Ultimate BlackBerry Storm Tattoo! (Yes, someone really tattooed themselves) and Pudding Wrestling in Times Square. The fever pitch over the Blackberry Storm came its culmination today as hundreds waited to get their Storm.
Vodaphone Blackberry Storm Ad
But with all the hype and reviews, not much about the quality of the camera other than the specs. The Storm has a 3.2 Megapixel camera with flash and auto-focus. That sounded great, but with all this anticipation and built-up disappoint over the iPhone’s camera, I was anxious to find out how well the Storm would work with Qipit.
So this morning I headed over to pickup my pre-ordered Blackberry Storm at the Verizon Wireless store. After a day of testing in the real world, I am happy to report the Blackberry Storm gets our highest Qipit test rating of 4 stars! That means it can caputre text as small as 6 point font. That is amounst the best performance of any camera phones (not quite as good as the 5 mega-pixel Nokia N95), but the Storm is certainly at the top of the heap with smartphones that have a full QWERTY keyboard.
Here are the results:
Blackberry Storm Qipit Test (Original Picture)
Blackberry Storm Qipit Test (Qipit Copy)
Click image to see close-up or download PDF
The camera has several setting options including image stabilization, picture size (2048×1536, 1024×768, 640×480), picture quality (Superfine, Fine, Normal) and Geotagging. By setting up email, you can send multiple attachments, this means you can make a qipit of a multi-paged document with ease. Just attach each picture in your email in the order you want the pages, then send them to color@qipit.com. If you want to name the document include that in the subject line and if you want to fax or email directly to someone you simply include the fax number or email address in the body of the email. That’s it and with the Storm’s keyboard typing this information is a breeze.
Oh yeah, here is some other news. Qipit is in this month’s PC World Magazine (December 2008 issue on page 104). Check out the qipit I made of the article using the Storm.
We are always happy when others help spread the word about how easy it is to copy and share magazines, newspapers and whiteboards with your camera phone. Now with the Blackberry Storm, it just got a lot easier.
~ Conrad
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Hey Conrad,
Good to see you’re still alive. hope all’s doing well.
btw, tried to download the PDF version of the PC magazine review and it comes all black.
Cheers
Yannick
May 14th, 2009 at 2:09 am
The Storm has varity of functions.Ithas a 3.2 Megapixel camera with flash and auto-focus.If you want to name the document include that in the subject line and if you want to fax or email directly to someone you simply include the fax number or email address in the body of the email.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Does it work with the Blackberry Curve 8330 ?
May 21st, 2009 at 2:40 pm
@ Al Robin - Yes, Qipit works well on the Blackberry Curve 8330, for whiteboards, flipcharts and some handwritten notes with large print. For Qipit to work on documents you need a camera phone or digital camera with the ability to change it’s focal point to give a clear close up picture. This feature is called auto-focus or macro-mode, and unfortunately there are not any blackberry’s with these features, but almost all digital cameras have this feature. To make sure your photo will make a clear qipit, a good rule of thumb is to look at the picture, if is blurry and out of focus, it will not produce a good qipit.