When I hear the word Blackberry pictures of a keyboard and a screen pop into my head. I’m talking Bold’s, Curve’s, Tour’s and even the 957, 7280, 7980, etc. Indeed Blackberry has had a rich history of producing devices with physical keyboards. At the same time when I think about their touchscreen only devices I think of the Storm and Storm 2 and get chills down my spine. To be fair the Storms were okay when they came out but frankly they aged terribly. Anyways, here’s RIM’s newest touchscreen only device the Blackberry Torch 9860. Here’s a preview, it’s a lot better than the Storm.
When I first picked it up I was surprised how small it is. I’ve been using a lot of Android devices lately and they’ve been getting bigger and bigger lately. While 3.7” displays used to be common place we now have 4, 4.2, 4.5 and even 5” displays. The Torch makes due with a 3.7” display which to be honest is big enough. Text and pictures look fine on the display. The screen has a resolution of 800x480. One neat feature that the Storms had were a clickable screen - while I didn’t love this feature it’s kind of funny to use a touchscreen Blackberry that doesn’t have this feature.
It’s a nice phone to hold. It’s very curvy so it really molds to your hand. It’s quite a contrast from an iPhone 4 which is very slab like.
It’s a solid phone with a nice metal battery cover. The battery cover has rubberized paint on the back side. There are 4 menu buttons on the bottom of the Torch which are quite stiff. Personally I really like that the buttons are real buttons and not touch ones like you get on many Android ones. It means you’ll never press them by accident like you do on an HTC device. There’s also a trackpad in the middle.
On top is the lock button.
Volume button, camera button and headphone jack on the right side.
micro USB on the left.
Blackberry OS 7 works much better with a touch screen than OS 4.5 and 5 did on the Storms. It’s much more fluid. Still, at times you can see the Blackberry OS’s non touchscreen roots. A lot of the time there are too many menu items to scroll through.
I’ve been using my iPhone along with a bunch of touchscreen only Android phones lately a lot recently so I’m not quite used to where the enter button is on the Torch’s keyboard. It’s where the backspace button is on the iPhone and Android. It actually mimics the keyboard on QWERTY blackberry so if you’re coming from a Curve or a Bold then you’ll feel right at home. Personally I was luke-warm about the 9860’s keyboard. I think a bigger screen would have made the keyboard easier to use.
Blackberries are all about messaging and the Torch is no different. I love how it aggregates all your messaging into one inbox (or separate ones if you don’t like that). That includes email, Facebook messages, BBM’s, SMS, etc.
The browser is miles better than OS5 and older Blackberries but it’s a little slower than what you’d get on a similarly priced Android phone or iPhone.
There’s a 5mp autofocus camera on the back with a LED flash. Pretty standard stuff. I love how there’s a dedicated camera button on the side. Picture quality is decent outdoors and about average indoors. Indoors it prefers to uses slow shutter speeds which means you have to hold it very still and have a very cooperative subject. I also find it likes to use the camera flash more than I’d like to see. The flash is really terrible up close.
The Torch records video at 720p. Quality is decent. Videos look fine and are motion is nice and smooth. The video can get a little grainy indoors but they don’t get choppy which is what’s important to me. Audio capture is very good - I also noticed that there is less handling noise.
While not outstanding as an operating system Blackberry OS 7 get’s a pass. The problem with Blackberries is that they introduced 2 new screen resolutions with their latest generation of devices. Before you had 480x320, 480x360 along with a few others. Now you have those resolutions plus 640x480 on the newest Bold and 800x480 on the Torch. So, while there aren’t a lot of apps available for Blackberry there are even less for the Torch. So if you really like apps the Torch isn’t a very exciting device to use.
Battery life isn’t as good as you’d expect from a Blackberry but it is better than what you get from the competition. You’ll probably get a little over a day of standby.
RF performance is very good. Both Incoming and outgoing sound quality are good.
If you want a Blackberry and want the largest display the 9860 a nice alternative to the Bold 9900. Compared to a similarly priced Android device (Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation/EVO 3D, LG Optimus 3D, Motorola XT860, etc) you have to take into how much messaging you do and how important it is. If it’s not then all these devices offer more apps, and better web browsing. The Galaxy S II also has a much better camera while the rest of the have better camera specs (though none have a very good camera). Ditto for the iPhone 4.
So while many Android devices and the iPhone 4 are better in some aspects messaging is still a very important feature which the Torch 9860 does really well.
Personally, touch screen only devices are not for me, but with that being said, this thing looks pretty good in comparison to the previous Storm series. I'm very glad to see that they've ditched SurePress. If I could deal with touch-screen only, this device is actually quite sexy!
What I've never understood with RIM is how they market their devices. Are they purposely trying to confuse people? When I think ‘Torch’, I think slide-out keyboard. Why go and mess with people by introducing another 'Torch' device that looks nothing like the 9800 or 9810? And launch it concurrently with the 9810 might I add?!
Then there was the 9630 which was a 'Tour', and the virtually identical 9650 which they decided to call a 'Bold'. I could understand calling the 9630 a Bold to begin with, but you can't change it at that stage in the game!
Anyways, nice review Howard. I think there is a market for this phone out there, although I think RIM is kidding themselves if they think they’re going to capture a substantial amount of iPhone market share with this bad boy.
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