Well yesterday the new Telus Blackberry Tour launched in our stores and having gotten one I wanted to give everyone my first impressions of it. This will be followed by a more in depth review as time goes by and i get to use more of the phones features.
I switched over to the Tour from the blackberry storm, and the main reason for this was because i wanted to go back to a full qwerty keyboard again. While the storm has a great interface, my biggest pet peave about the storm wasnt the keyboard, it was the suretype. Alot of words i used werent in the library so it would automatically add the wrong one. That isnt a problem on the tour as it has the full keyboard.
Ill start off with the look and feel of the phone. Size wise the phone is practically identical to the storm as far as size, but seems alot lighter. One complaint is the back battery cover. It just feels and in my opinion looks kind of cheap for a $600 phone. Im hoping some companies come out with aftermarket replacement pieces for it. But it does feel good in your hand. One other small problem is the location of the charge/usb port. Its location makes it a bit more difficult to use the phone while its charging.
The screen on the tour is a great high res screen, and using the demo material on the memory card from my storm it looks great playing videos and movies. The biggest difference is just the size of the screen. The media player works excellent on the phone though and while it kinda sucks watching the movies on the smaller screen they still look great.
Performance. Now this is where i have really come to like to tour. Now it may have just been my storm but i was finding it needed to have a batt pull done every couple days otherwise the phone would lag alot, especially msging. And as i use the phone mostly for msging it was a big annoying problem. Now with the tour, ive only had it a day so far but it has been working smoothly and quickly. Plus i dont have to worry about difficulty clicking the bottom left of the screen. Most of the major apps i want are also available for the tour with the addition of a few extra ones.
Value. Now with the storm, since it was their new "iphone killer" they included a nice set of accessories in the package when you got the phone. The tour comes with most of them, including a very nice holster for the phone instead of the usual sleeve they give you. The one thing i think they could have included was a larger memory card. It only shipped with a 1gb memory card, which now of days is nothing special as most regular phones include the same. But pricing on the phone is pretty good with telus offering it for 229 on a new 3yr voice and data plan.
Overall. So far i have to say i really like this phone from my current use of it. I think my biggest complaint is the battery cover and how cheap it feels. But its definately a phone i would reccomend to others. And when they start launching themes and everything for it it can only get better.
Nice review Mark!
I have a friend who is going to try to get the Tour, so you know I'll be playing with it if I can. 
The complaints you've noted are also complaints I've heard from others (battery cover and USB slot), but you've also picked up on the strengths. The only other potential complaint that some people have had is that they don't care for the trackball in the Tour, but that's probably a personal preference issue. And the biggest strength I do see in the Tour is the extended application memory - 256MB versus the 128MB that came with the Storm. If you like downloading lots of apps to your phone, the Tour is probably the better option for you.
I think the Tour is going to be a really nice phone, and for those who want a physical keyboard, this is the best option. Personally, I'll be staying with my Storm but that's because I just can't give up the full screen and I like the touchscreen - I can see it now, I'd go to using the Tour and would sit and swipe the screen repeatedly, getting frustrated because why isn't it responding 
).
Mark, if you haven't already, upgrade your Storm to 4.7.0.151 and see what you think (assuming you still have it in your possession) - I have a much snappier phone without any real memory leak (I'm still up at 39MB after 3 days - down 3MB from bootup - I've never been able to say this before).
Thought i would add a few new things about the phone as well as some recent downloads for it.
I have had the phone for a bit longer now and have gotten a chance to use it a bit more. The battery has been working really well and even with my high number of messages i usually get a couple days out of it without charging. All the programs have been working without a hitch less a few but i will explain that a bit later. But the phone hasnt showed any signs of slowing down after several days use without reset.
Now a couple bad things i have noticed. The first i just noticed yesterday is google maps and gps. It doesnt seem to want to find any satelites with google maps, although blackberry maps works fine with it. Im sure there is a way to "unlock" this but i just havent really looked as its not that important to me.
The other is kinda a good with a bad attached to it. Some may have heard that there was a leaked version of blackberry messenger 5.0. Well i installed it when i heard about it, and definately have to say it has some really cool new features, and looks 100% better than the previous version. The new version allows avatars, group msgs, a new way of adding contacts (individual barcodes), as well as more smilies and many other things. I must say im very impressed with it, the only problem so far is a delay sending and recieving messages. But i have heard that this is a problem with the blackberry servers and is not related to my upgraded bbm. I have reregistered my blackberry and so far it seems to be working without a problem but only time will tell. And since this is a problem with many people using different phones it doesnt have any bearing on my current opinion of the tour.
So so far i would definately have to say that if someone is looking for a full qwerty keyboard phone that i would have no problem reccomending the new blackberry tour.
Couple of quick notes:
- Problem with GPS and Google Maps: this is a problem with the Canadian carriers (shame on them). I still use BlackBerry maps for my GPS needs, and Google Maps for other things as well. There is indeed supposed to be a way to unlock this, but it's beyond most people's abilities and requires getting into the code of the phone.
- BlackBerry Messenger 5.0: apparently a lot more people downloaded it than anyone expected so there was indeed a slow down (I upgraded right after it was leaked as well). So far, mine has been pretty quick, but I do believe that is because BlackBerry improved the servers since then or dedicated more server bandwidth to it since then.
Ooo, Mark, you took the hybrid plunge! 
Here's the catch with hybrids. They work for some people, they don't work for others (for example, hybrids usually create some sort of glitch on my phone). Installing a hybrid is also more likely to brick your phone, so if you take such a plunge, make sure you know how to recover a dead BlackBerry first.
There have also been some new leaked OSes released. Install at your own risk, and understand that if you do install them, your carrier does not support leaked OSes. That said, some of these leaks can give great insight into upcoming features, especially when your carrier is slow to upgrade their OSes (*cough* Telus *cough*)
(I'm including this disclaimer just so that people are aware).
