It seems that Android and Droid are everywhere these days, and that’s no wonder given an estimated $100M advertisement budget committed by Verizon for the Droid campaign alone. On top of that, we just love new gadgets and the buzz and excitement that go with it. Who doesn’t want to join the party?

Yet, with all that media noise it gets harder to objectively decide what features and functionality really matter the most before committing to a new smart-phone and the obligatory carrier contract. No question, the new Android phones and the Moto Droid are fantastic and give you just a glimpse of things to come, but the Blackberry Storm is in many ways an equal contender on a more mature platform. The launch of the original Storm last year was a bit of a flop – mainly because the software was just not ready for prime time and subsequent patches were slow to market. Here are 5 reasons why you should still look at the Storm when shopping for your next smart-phone.

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Verizon finally broke their silence this morning and announced the release of the Blackberry Storm2 this Wednesday, October 28.

The Storm2 resembles much of its predecessor, with some cosmetic and some functional improvements (read bug fixes), but most importantly the addition of Wi-Fi. The Boy Genius Report is currently testing a production unit and will be posting a full review shortly.

There has been much speculation over Verizon’s unusually low-profile release of the Storm2. Could this perhaps be a direct result of the disappointing results for the original Storm – both in terms of total sales and customer (dis)satisfaction? There were rumors that the Storm had the highest return rate of any phone right after its original release.

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