BlackBerry Storm 9500 Review

BlackBerry 9500 or codenamed with Storm was a splendid breakthrough from RIM. In my opinion, the Storm was one of the BlackBerry notable milestone since trackball. 

No I'm not exaggerating. Here are the reason why :

1. Storm is the first BlackBerry using touch screen and no hardware keyboard at all.
2. Storm is also the first 'multimedia' based BlackBerry as we could see it from the large display and storming audio.
3. Storm touch screen technology is also somewhat revolutional. It adopts the SureType into SurePress and also a mechanic on capacitive screen display which will make the user feels like clicking in a real button. Well, I am surely cannot explain the feeling perfectly using words, but trust me it works. Storm's virtual keyboard + clicking display is working really fine.
4. Have I mentioned that you could use a traditional 'abc' style keypad + qwerty + SurePress? Choose whichever suits you better. No pressure.
5. It has the best camera that BlackBerry ever embedded to its device -> 3,2 Mpx + Auto Focus.
6. It could record Video.

I'm currently using the official OS 5.0.484 for Telkomsel and it seems that everything went well until today. I have no complains at all using this device.

Well, actually there was one complain. I couldn't stand the auto-rotate feature that Storm has. Everytime I hold it wrong, it will automatically rotate and that is very annoying. I solve it by buying StopTilt software from CrackBerry or you could get it at Mobihand or in BlackBerry App World for $4,99 and that was the best software for Storm so far. LOL. 

Other application that I installed are : Google Sync, Opera Mini, OpenBeak, SmartBBattery, Quick Pull, and Forward Reply Edit. I also found a few good games : Labyrinth LITE, Shotgun, CoinToss for Storm, Lights Out, Flight Path and SL Blackjack. 

Actually there are still many good software but all I installed above are the free one :) Except for the StopTilt of course. 

At the end I would really recommend this BlackBerry for you who :

1. Needs a BlackBerry!
2. Likes Touch Screen
3. Likes to watch videos on your handheld (big screen!)
4. Likes to be different from other crackberries. In Jakarta most of the BlackBerry are Bold series and Curve series
5. Likes a new thing. Yes the typing might be stressful for some people (not me!) and trust me all you need to do is more practicing and typing as many as you can.

In Jakarta, or more specifically in Indosat BlackBerry mailing lists, the Storm is said to be sold for only IDR 2,5 million (around USD 270 at this moment). It's cheaper than BlackBerry 9630, BlackBerry 8900 and slightly more expensive than BlackBerry 8520.

Hotspot Solution with Captive Portal

Last week I got this project to setup a hotspot for a new coffee shop in Kelapa Gading area. Setting up the wireless is easy, but with captive portal? That's new to me. Oh, captive portal is used so the users need to get a user and password before using the network. So I googled for a clue and found this site that list down a lot of wireless application: http://www.personaltelco.net/PortalSoftware. The list was actually very helping to make a start.

To make it short, I tried a few of them but I found it too complex for a simple WiFi setup. Another search brought me to Coova project (coova.org). I use the CoovaAP which is a firmware for a LinkSys Router and voila I finished the setup in no time.. well, it took me 3 days actually. LOL. The hardest part is because I'm trying to put the router behind another router which always failed. So I then switch the main router with the CoovaAP to solve the riddle.

Okay, here is how to use CoovaAP :

1. Test your LinkSys using the original firmware. Setup an 'usual' hotspot. If it works flawlessly, proceed to next step.
2. Download a CoovaAP firmware for your device here. I used a LinkSys WRT54GL so I downloaded this file.
3. Connect to your LinkSys router directly and choose Administration - Firmware Upgrade. Choose the firmware file and click upgrade and you are advised to do this with the router plugged to an UPS. 
4. Wait until the process finish. The router will then reboot and after the DMZ light turned off, you will be ready to setup the Coova. Open the http://192.168.1.1/ page. (You need to be in the same subnet. I need not to tell you this thing actually.)
5. Taken from the guide, you need to enable boot_wait in the System - Setting. This will help you if something go wrong with the router. OH that's right. Never forget to click Save Settings in every page after you make changes. You will then see a line like this "4 config changes pending" in the screen. Click it and Apply the changes.
6. After that, setup the router network first. Setup the LAN IP and the WAN IP (the default is DHCP).
7. You might want to try connect the wifi without any hotspot solution yet. If everything works fine proceed to Hotspot menu.
8. To simplify your life, just use the "Internal Hotspot". Yes, it means the software used is inside the router actually. Neat huh?
9. After that, you might want to choose how the users will be granted the access. Whether using a login or simply to accept the ToS. Save changes!
10. Then if you want to go for the first one, create a sample custom users using the link in the right of the option. Create an user 'user' and password '123'.
11. After that you could edit the portal page. Just click it and choose which part you want to customize.
12. Phew, here is the last one. Ensure the internet line is up (step 7) and the internet LED should be green. Test your connection using another wifi-enabled devices. Open any URLs and you will be redirected to CoovaAP login page. :) 

Congratulations! You now have just deployed a captive portal for hotspot.