They have done it again.  RIM has managed to design an even worse phone than the Blackberry Pearl.  The new Blackberry Storm proves that bad design and execution ruins a phone more than an extensive feature list helps it.  Much has been written about this, but I think that David Pogue puts it best in his review (I won’t repeat what he says here):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/technology/personaltech/27pogue.html

Another major problem is that RIM is trying to be something that it is not — cool.  Blackberry used to be solid and the design of its phones and the reliability of its infrastructure proved that.  They were not the slickest phones out there, but they worked and worked well.  The iPhone is not perfect — it has its bugs, too.  But, Apple didn’t set out to create the most reliable phone in the world, and Blackberry absolutely should since its core client base is businesses and people who have depended on its reliability for years.

Blackberry’s design was flawed the second they tried to be something they are not.  Having released several poorly designed phones, a halo of inferiority is poised to kill Blackberry’s future.