It was so tempting to install the new 4.7.0.122 when it was first released as a bunch of loader files that had to be hacked into a previous versions folder to load but no, I decided to stay patient on this one and it paid off because about a week later the new Storm OS was available from Bell on RIM’s site! I’m on Telus but tat didn’t stop me and I loaded it the second I got home from work. You can find links to the OS and installation instructions here, so far it’s a Bell only official release so don’t expect Telus to support it but if you just cant wait you can still install now. I’ve been running it for about 2 days now, here is what I’ve noticed so far…
The Good:
- The phone does feel generally snappier.
- the new text selection method is nice and feels way more accurate but I’m not sure how I feel about the square that shows up around the cursor yet.
- I have about 10 megs more application memory available than I did while running 113 and the memory leaks seem to be better, I still loose available memory just not as much and definitely not as fast.
- camera feels a little snappier too except (see cons)
The Bad:
- Phone crashed once while trying to take a picture, flashed some sort of error for about a half a second before re-booting.
- after playing a video and then stopping it and exiting the media app I had the media player controls stuck on the screen when it was in portrait mode. The only way to make it go back to normal was to do a battery pull. This did happen once with 113 about a month ago though so looks like that bug is still there.
The Verdict:
Ya, so it’s still not perfect but totally a step in the right direction. It’s hard to explain, I guess it feels really good and at times impressive, makes me feel like showing it off to people and they are usually impressed! I’ve heard comments like “wow, pretty slick” and seconds later the phone crashes and I have to put my tail between my legs and do a battery pull. Almost there, so close RIM, now lets get an official release from Telus and fix the rest of the issues before Storm 2 is released.
Ed.