Now I know the review unit I got last week was not a lemon, but I guess the real deal. I too planned to write a review and record a video for all of you guys to watch, but unfortunately, the device was such a mess, I wasn’t sure what to do. As with Pogue, I found that the phone had a delayed response to being in landscape mode vs. portrait. Worse yet, at one point, the screen shifted about an inch to the right, causing the word “Verizon,” to wrap around, appearing as “izon Ver” on the screen. Once rebooted and recharged the flaw went away, but there were other glitches, too. When the keyboard appeared, sometimes keys were missing, or bleeding from one into one another. Also, I seriously questioned the “clickable” screen, which is supposed to replicate the feel of typing. Pogue compared it to an old school typewriter, but I just thought it made the device feel flimsy, like the screen was loose. And, after hundreds of emails and being stuffed into a purse thousands of times, what are the chances that it won’t break?

The thing that baffles me is why aren’t the thousands of consumers who have purchased the device revolting? In Europe, the device went on sale even early from Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), which owns almost half of Verizon Wireless. If a mass wave of dissatisfaction is coming, it will only spell bad news for RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), and surely hurt its reputation for being known as the maker of reliable enterprise devices. NOTE TO ALL VERIZON WIRELESS CUSTOMERS: You have 30 days to return a device…

Perhaps, if the company moves fast enough, it can do damage control. Pogue says a software update is coming that RIM claims will fix some of the glitches. Maybe the company is banking on customers hanging in there, after all, almost everything is shipped in beta today and improved over the product’s life. On paper, the Storm does remain a viable competitor on an apples-to-apples basis with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). It comes with 8 GB of memory for storing music and other digital content, it costs just as much as the iPhone at $200, and it even beats the iPhone in some categories, such as being able to copy and paste, and having a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash and zoom. Pogue wonders the same thing as I do and writes like he is almost thinking out loud: “How did this thing ever reach the market? Didn’t anyone at RIM actually try it?” If my beta theory holds any water, it may have even been Verizon Wireless that was pushing RIM to get a device out fast and worry about the details later. For some, Christmas definitely came too early.