Vodafone seems to be the first one in taking pre-orders for the BlackBerry Storm 2 and they are planing to deliver it by Oct 26th. Yeii! It looks they will be offering the phone for free on a 2 year contract with a monthly fee of £35. Customers on the UK and Ireland will be the first ones to get their hands on this device, followed by Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.

Based on the TechCrunch article here are some insights on the Storm 2.

Overall, I found the Storm2 worked well in my tests. Battery life was decent, with 5.5 hours of claimed talk time, and typing was much improved, though I doubt it will satisfy lovers of physical keyboards.

The browser is still inferior to Apple’s, Google’s and Palm’s. And the traditional BlackBerry interface cries out for a major overhaul in a touch device like this, especially when you add a lot of apps. RIM’s menu and folder metaphor seems tired on this device.

Verizon hasn’t set a launch date or price for the Storm2, but it’s likely to appear in November at around $200.

The Pre-Order your phone head over to Vodafone Website.

If any of you purchase one, let me know what you thought!

About time, now Vodafone users can update their Storm 9500’s software. The OS 4.7.0.75 was leaked before few days ago but now you can head over to The Vodafone.de website and grab a copy from their site.