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Are Microsoft ripping off Plurk, Asia’s No.1 Microblogging Service?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Looking at the BlackBerry Storm2 (9520)

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

So while I was working in town today I thought I would pop in to my local Vodafone shop and ask when the new BlackBerry Storm2 would be available, and was surprised by their answer that it was already in stock! Not one to waste an opportunity I asked to take a look at it (even though my earliest chance to own one will be in about six months time ;-) ). And a mighty fine beast it was too, at least once they managed to work out how to turn it on.

It felt great in the hand, the UI was very similar to the original Storm but much smoother and the app transitions looked great. The changes to the shape and screen are definitely an improvement, especially moving the speaker from the rear of the unit to the bottom edge. The best new feature in my opinion though is the adding of Wi-Fi. The OS version for release is v5.0.0.306, though Vodafone have not yet officially released this for use on the Storm 1, lets hope that gets sorted soon!

What I was most surprised about though was that it seems to of arrived with such a lack of fanfare, no window displays in the Vodafone shop and no major press releases I have come across, I didn't even see a mention of it over at www.crackberry.com which is my main source of news for all things BlackBerry, though on the way home from town I did notice a bus stop ad for it.

The Vodafone site has the full specs available, and the pricing plan looks reasonable at free on £35 and £40 monthly plans for two years with the £40 package giving you unlimited texts, land line minutes and mobile Internet along with your 900 cross network mobile minutes. While in-store I also noticed an 18 month contract available at £40 with the phone still free but the mobile minutes at 600, which would be enough for me. Anyone else out there had a chance to play with this baby? Let me know what you think in the comments.