After experiencing problems with the original Blackberry Storm, Verizon eventually upgraded me to the Storm 2. I have to say that, for the most part, I have been satisfied with this phone. The touchscreen keyboard is only functional for me when it is in the wider landscape mode. When I try to type in the portrait mode, my fingers cannot hit the correct keys simply from the standpoint of spacing. The keys are just too close together. The one issue I experience consistently is when I try to hit the "a" button I instead get a "q" which I do find frustrating. From the standpoint of overall ease of use, this phone is pretty simple to operate. A good number of apps are available including internet based radio from Slacker, Pandora, and i-Heart radio. You can use an aux cable to connect the phone to your car's radio and play these stations through your sound system. The calendar function, contacts, and e-mail all work extremely well on this phone. Occasionally, the phone does freeze which requires a soft reset by removing the battery. For whatever reason, these issues seem to have been minimized over the past six months or so. After a somewhat rough start with the Storm line of phones, I would now have to say that I do enjoy the Storm 2.
June '11: As an update, I continue to use the Storm 2 and it has now been better than a year. Like most Blackberry devices, it does a wonderful job with e-mail. If you have multiple e-mail accounts, it is simple to add each to your phone. This in itself has made my life much easier. From the standpoint of downloading free apps, I have recently experienced difficulty with two new apps. In short, after downloading each, my phone gets stuck on the agreement screen where you have to check the box. I solved this problem by deleting the apps. My guess is that one of the Blackberry updates does not work well with these apps or I have a conflict with an old one. Like anything Blackberry, I do find that these devices are simply not very intuitive. Instead, you almost have to think in a Blackberry sort of way and I do find that frustrating. For example, if you would like to make a simple change to your phone's settings, you really have to spend a few minutes playing around with the Options menu to figure out how to do this. With all of this said, sometime next year I do plan to switch to a new phone and it probably won't be a Blackberry.