While some users have praised the touchscreen for being "clickable" - allowing it to offer tactile feedback - many say the keys on the virtual keyboard are too close together and the clickable screen is cumbersome for typing long messages. This is a deal breaker for a device that is designed primarily for email. "I think dumping an unfinished, buggy device on people was pretty shameful and shoddy," wrote one user on CrackBerry.com in a view consistent with other accounts.

Vodafone has heavily subsidised the handset cost of the Storm, offering it for $0 upfront on a $69-a-month plan that includes unlimited email and internet usage. Both Vodafone and the US carrier Verizon say the Storm is their fastest selling handset yet. Vodafone said last month it was forced to push back the Australian launch from Monday due to unprecedented demand. "In the UK, we've been selling a Vodafone Storm every 13 seconds, and on the basis of demand from our pre-registration process, which is well into the thousands, we're expecting demand to be just as hot here in Australia," Vodafone Australia CEO Russell Hewitt said at the time.

But the honeymoon period has now worn off after overseas users had the chance to play with the Storm for a few weeks. "Having used many other [BlackBerry maker] Research In Motion devices, I can't remember a device being released with so many bugs," Allen Nogee, In-Stat Research's principal analyst for wireless technology, told MSNBC.

"There is no doubt that this device was rushed to market to make the Christmas selling season." David Pogue, the gadget reviewer for The New York Times, dubbed it the "BlackBerry Dud" in his review, published late last month. He found that operating the phone using the touchscreen was far clunkier than on the iPhone's touchscreen, and picked up several minor but annoying bugs.

"When you open a menu, the commands are too close together; even if your finger seems to be squarely on the proper item, your click often winds up activating something else in the list," he wrote.

Another universal complaint about the Storm has been its slow operation, particularly when switching between vertical and horizontal modes using the built-in motion sensor. The long shutter delay on the built-in camera has also attracted criticisms, as has the crashing media player. In an update published today, Pogue said he had received 100 comments from readers who bought the Storm and regretted it.

"Where do I begin? The address book is a joke. Can't go straight to any given letter, so must scroll all the way through every time," wrote one agitated Storm user. "Everything's slow: Scrolling, screen rotating, selecting apps, search ... everything. It has crashed several times just trying to play movies. When you press the screen, it jumps over and 'clicks' the key next to what you wanted ... this is maddeningly frustrating." Research in Motion has so far refused to comment on the complaints.