This morning I was hoping for some music, so I thought I would check for an update from either Pandora or Slacker Radio. To my surprise Slacker Radio has released their native application for the BlackBerry Storm.

The installation process was a simple OTA download. I went to their site from my desktop to create a free account, then I logged into the application.

Slacker Radio My first impression is that the application looks great. Well done design, simple interface with a coverflow style display for the tracks being played. Ironically during the very first track it died 4 minutes into a 5 minute song. My assumption is that this is just Verizon Wireless’s shoddy 3G coverage.

Once the player recovered and started to play music again things seemed be on the right track, but then I received an email. Sure BlackBerries are known for incredible push-technology keeping us all up to date, but it interrupted my tunes just to sound a chime. The Slacker Radio player’s buttons still displayed the ‘pause’ button implying that music was playing, but to get the music going again I had to press pause, then press play.

Slacker Radio The player supports both portrait and landscape display modes, utilizing the BlackBerry Storm’s accelerometer to change display.

My next test was to switch from using the headphone jack on the Storm to using my Motorola SoundPilot S705 stereo Bluetooth pendant. The S705 was simple to pair to the BlackBerry Storm and once turned on the Slacker Radio application began streaming to the headphones.

While using the standard media player from the BlackBerry Storm the S705 lets you control playback with play/pause, forward, and back buttons. The Slacker Radio player did not accept these controls from the headset. I could only control the volume on the S705.

The sound quality was good and made it easy for me to leave my Storm on the desk while I moved around the office. I could even keep listening to the music while I went to get coffee. Music and caffeine; now that’s a great combination.