Previously rumored as BlackBerry Slider 9800
For AT&T
| GENERAL | 2G Network | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
|---|---|---|
| 3G Network | HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 /800 | |
| Announced | 2010, August | |
| Status | Available. Released 2010, August |
| SIZE | Dimensions | 111 x 62 x 14.6 mm |
|---|---|---|
| Weight | 161 g |
| DISPLAY | Type | TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 360 x 480 pixels, 3.2 inches | |
| - QWERTY keyboard - Optical trackpad - Multi-touch input method - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off |
| SOUND | Alert types | Vibration, MP3 ringtones |
|---|---|---|
| Loudspeaker | Yes | |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes, check quality |
| MEMORY | Phonebook | Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall |
|---|---|---|
| Call records | Yes | |
| Internal | 4 GB storage, 512 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM | |
| Card slot | microSD, up to 32GB, 4GB card included, buy memory |
| DATA | GPRS | Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps |
|---|---|---|
| EDGE | Class 10, 236.8 kbps | |
| 3G | HSDPA; HSUPA | |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, UMA (carrier-dependent) | |
| Bluetooth | Yes, v2.1 with A2DP | |
| Infrared port | No | |
| USB | Yes, microUSB v2.0 |
| CAMERA | Primary | 5 MP, 2592Ñ…1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality |
|---|---|---|
| Features | Geo-tagging, continuous auto-focus, image stabilization | |
| Video | Yes, VGA@24fps | |
| Secondary | No |
| FEATURES | OS | BlackBerry OS 6.0 |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 624 MHz processor | |
| Messaging | SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM | |
| Browser | HTML | |
| Radio | No | |
| Games | Yes + downloadable | |
| Colors | Black, White, Dark Orange | |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS support | |
| Java | Yes, MIDP 2.0 | |
| - Social feeds - BlackBerry maps - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) - Media player MP3/WMA/eAAC+/FlAC/OGG player - Video player DivX/XviD/MP4/WMV/H.263/H.264 - Organizer - Voice memo/dial |
| BATTERY | Standard battery, Li-Ion 1300 mAh | |
|---|---|---|
| Stand-by | Up to 432 h (2G) / Up to 336 h (3G) | |
| Talk time | Up to 5 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 5 h 40 min (3G) | |
| Music play | Up to 30 h |
| MISC | SAR US | 0.91 W/kg (head) 0.68 W/kg (body) |
|---|---|---|
| SAR EU | 0.86 W/kg (head) 0.81 W/kg (body) | |
| Price group |  |
Review
Overview
We've overhauled our BlackBerry Torch review in light of recent firmware upgrades and a big drop in price - from £40 to £30 a month in some cases, and nearly £100 off the SIM free price.
Take a look at this updated review to see if this extra cost savings make the BlackBerry Torch a market leading smartphone.
For years, they were the businessman's workhorse – the status symbol that you'd made it in the corporate world. But Blackberry's approach has changed of late – buoyed on (or shaken) by the success of Apple's iPhone and various Android competitors, maker RIM has reshaped its approach.
As Apple tries to show its iPhone can make it in the corporate world, Blackberry's changed its tune and is now targeting the traditionally youthful music and social media lovers.
After the love-it-or-hate-it SurePress screen of the BlackBerry Storm andStorm 2, the Torch has gone for what is now the industry standard: a capacitive screen with no clicks needed.
The device feels like a quality product. It's shiny and has a 3.2-inch display. While not up there with the iPhone 4's Retina display in terms of clarity, as far as physical size goes, the Torch's screen does give the impression of being bigger than it is.
The phone's heavy enough to notice – yet not enough to make carrying it a chore. But while the sliding keyboard locks in and out without rattling, this doesn't feel like a device that would survive being dropped onto a hard floor too many times.
The key selling point when the Torch was released in late 2010 was that it was the first device to ship with BlackBerry OS 6. But now, it's got competition in the Bold 9780.Function-wise, they're the same with GPS, Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi and a 5.0MP shooter –but even though the screens are of an identical resolution, the Torch's falls behind that of the Bold 9780 because the pixels are spread over a larger area, resulting in it not looking as sharp.
One of BlackBerry's strengths has always been just how much you can customise its devices. This is either through BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) – where the employer customises it and you have little control – or BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS), where you can change as much as you like. Indeed, when you go from an iPhone to a Blackberry, you realise just how closed Apple's system is.
But can you have too much of a good thing? The answer is probably yes.
For example, changing the ringtone is easy enough, but customising profiles is an intense experience, with so many options even a power user is left reaching for the smelling salts. Setting up ringtones, text alerts, MMS alerts, email alerts, Twitter, Facebook, the browser, IM, BBM and so on gets confusing when you realise just many options you have, and you end up giving up halfway through.
One huge omission has also been made with the Torch. When we opened the box, we were pleased with the various accessories (including standard BlackBerry international chargers), but where was the case? Close inspection revealed that this phone doesn't come with one, which we find unforgivable.
BlackBerry has bundled one with almost every phone it's made in the last few years and there's a reason for that – not only do the holders protect the phone from bumps, they also automatically shut off the screen and put the phone into standby, helping the battery last even longer. If the phone is in your pocket or bag, it prevents you accidentally dialling a contact - although the touchscreen slider should help there.
We can't, for the life of us, understand why BlackBerry have left such an obvious accessory out of the Torch's box, other than to encourage you to buy one. If that is the case, it will certainly irritate the legions of users that have become accustomed to getting a fancy new holster with every new BlackBerry.
Interface
If you've owned a BlackBerry before, the first thing you'll notice about OS 6 is how much glossier it is.
It's nowhere near as cluttered as the old OS 4 found on models like the popular Curve 8310 and looks like the more recent OS 5 first found on theBold 9000 with a little personality and colour injected into it.
One of the big gripes younger users had with OS 5 was that, although the Home screen and menu had been given a bit of a polish, when you got into the phonebook and the inner menus, it was same old BlackBerry. Black text, white background and little imagination – a look that suited the boardroom users, but not the younger crowd RIM has increasingly been chasing.Now, you notice that it has been given a significant update. The phonebook has thumbnails next to entries in the list, which seems to bring it alive. But it can look a bit untidy – especially if you only have photos for certain callers, since what you are left with is a series of nice photos mixed in with the stock icon the Torch provides.
Another addition RIM's put time into developing on OS 6 is multiple Home screens, enabling users to swipe between different app categories, such as All, Favourites, Media, Downloads and Frequent.It looks good but, in practice, can be a hindrance, and in many cases, we found ourselves simply using the All menu option simply because we knew where everything was.To be fair to Blackberry, this is as much the fault of developers who don't have the same financial incentives to write BB software – and as such, the apps that you do come across can be fairly costly because they're written with power users in mind, rather than people who may take a punt and spend £1.99 on a game to pass time.
A YouTube app was preloaded on our device but close inspection revealed it to be merely a link to the mobile site.There are also various social media options in the form of custom-made Twitter and Facebook apps, as well as a new Social Feeds app.
Twitter works well, but Facebook feels like it's getting a bit old now. Little has changed since it was first launched and though it does the job well, it now seems to lack imagination in its layout.
The Social Feeds app is more of an aggregator that lists all of your streams together in the same was that Tweetdeck does on a Mac or FriendStream does on HTC devices. It can be useful, but for those who like to keep their feeds separate, it can be too cluttered. However, it's good that RIM has given users more options than none.
BlackBerry Maps comes preloaded as standard with a shiny new icon, but when you open it, you realise it's the same old app that just is not up to the job.
We quickly found ourselves replacing it with Google Maps – a free app that completely shows up BlackBerry's effort and makes you wonder why RIM doesn't just drop Maps from the OS altogether.Internet
Browsing is where old-school BlackBerry users will notice a huge leap forward on OS 6 and the Torch. For years, it was the Achilles heel – the part of the OS that you felt RIM had forgotten about or couldn't be bothered with. But no more. The Torch gives BlackBerry users their best web-browsing experience yet.
Like Apple, Android and Nokia, it uses the WebKit engine to process pages, and the experience is fluid. Pages load incredibly quickly and mostly without error or formatting issues.
It's still not as quick as Safari on the iPhone – and you do find yourself looking at the blue loading bar at the bottom as sites render (loading the TechRadar site, for example took an extra four seconds over Wi-Fi alongside the iPhone) – but it is a valiant effort.
Navigating pages is simple and there are two new icons – bookmarks and tabs. Tabbed browsing makes a real difference – especially when you're engrossed in one site but just want to check something else quickly.
This isn't a phone where you need to worry about speeds when you're away from Wi-Fi either – in fact, loading over 3G was almost as quick. At times, we actually thought that we were still on Wi-Fi because pages loaded so quickly.
The processor may not be the beefiest at 624MHz, but it works well and zips along, happily loading sites. Very rarely did the ticking clock screen make an appearance to show that the phone was struggling to keep up.
If you're looking for Flash though, you'll not find it here, which is disappointing. While Steve Jobs has made a point of highlighting why you'll not find it on Apple devices, Android's implementation on newer devices has shown that it can be done – and done well. You can't help wondering why RIM hasn't bothered to put it in here.
In fact, after the initial 'wow' factor of using the browser, you realise that, while this experience is revolutionary compared to older RIM models, it's no different to other smartphones already out there. RIM hasn't created something magical, special or new here. It's merely caught up with what other phones have been doing well for a couple of years now.
Adding Flash would have given it an extra selling point as it has with Android. Instead, it appears to have been forgotten about, or ignored.
Camera
The Torch comes with a 5MP camera – that's about mid range these days but, with autofocus and LED flash, it is effective for most situations.
Startup time from cold was just over a second, trumping the iPhone which can often take three to four seconds to get going.
Images were good, though the flash under 'normal' settings was a little too eager sometimes – coming on when it didn't really need to, and it made the images look a little more yellow than they needed to be.
You really notice the change between what you see when you're focusing and the processed image. After the shutter click, the image changes to something richer and bolder in front of your eyes – as though an autofix has been performed.
There are multiple scene modes – but while you should commend RIM for giving so many options, it felt like there were too many. This is not the quality of a standalone camera and you'd still take your proper camera on holiday so does it really need 11 different scene options? Most users will just leave it on Automatic, which does the job well.
Even in pitch-black conditions, that very setting managed to pick out and autofocus on items, bathing them in a flash of light.
In low light, the shutter was too slow to capture the shot – it failed to get the dog wagging its tail and gave us a blur instead – and similarly in bright light, there is a little bleed from the sky. But this is a camera on a phone, not a camera on its own, and is definitely RIM's best effort so far. The big screen sets it a little bit higher up the bar than the Bold 9780 when it comes to taking pictures.
Battery
Users have always claimed BlackBerry devices have the best batteries, but we were expecting this one to not be very good – especially because of that large screen.
In practice, however, we were blown away by just how good it was.
We took it off charge with a full battery at 11pm on a Tuesday evening. By 6am, it had gone down just one per cent. Over the coming day, we streamed music over Bluetooth for two hours, watched a 20-minute video, made about 80 minutes of calls, used Google Maps (with GPS on – traditionally, a battery hogger) for 15 minutes, sent eight SMS and 16 emails and received around 10 Facebook/Twitter messages.
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G were on continuously. Despite this hammering of the battery, it was late Thursday morning before it finally gave up. That's almost 36 hours of heavy use. This really is a workhorse.
Blackberry claims the Torch will give 5.5 hours of talk time and up to 27 hours of music playback. It sounds a lot but – based on our experience – not beyond the realms of possibility. What's interesting is the fact that this phone only has a 1300mAh battery.
Anything less than 1400mAh on a smartphone would usually get a sneer and an upturned nose, but it's clear here that RIM has put a lot of effort into making sure that it doesn't guzzle juice like it could have.
If we had to pick one gripe about the battery, it's that you have to delve all the way into the menu to get an accurate reading of how much juice is left.
It would be much easier to be able to get a percentage reading by tapping the battery icon on the Home screen in the way that tapping other icons brings up their respective options (eg. Tapping the profiles icon brings up a list of profile options.)
BlackBerry Torch review: Comparison
It's hard to compare the Torch to a previous BlackBerry since, quite simply, there isn't one that's equivalent. There's the Storm 2, but that didn't have a physical keyboard.
There's the Bold 9700, but that didn't have a touchscreen. And neither had OS 6. The Torch seems to sit in between them, but moves the experience on with its updated OS.
When it's closed, it has that corporate look. When it's open and the screen lights up, it looks fun and could be used by anybody.
Its nearest competitor is the newer Bold 9780. The only real difference between them is the fact that the Torch has a larger screen (the same resolution but spread over a larger area) and the touchscreen capabilities
But the Bold 9780 also undermines the Torch, since it can no longer be marketed as the only phone to be running OS 6 – it has been usurped by a newer model that feels sturdier. You acan't help but feel that RIM is trying to keep up with everyone else here and launching a touchscreen for the sake of it.BlackBerry Torch review: Verdict
f you're a BlackBerry user who wants to move to OS 6, you may go for the Torch because it has that veneer of gloss. It's also a new form factor – especially when you consider the 9780 looks almost exactly the same as the 9700.
Likewise, if you're a power user who wants full customisation, this may suit better than an iPhone. And despite Android having been around for several years now, the media aspects of OS 6 far outshine Google's standard offering.
Overall, the Torch doess the basics (calls, messaging, Twitter, Facebook, PIM) well and then expands on them with an improved web browser (albeit without flash), brilliant media capabilities, a camera that does the job and phenomenal battery life.
And while perhaps the most common complaint about the Storm was its lack of physical keyboard – RIM's definitely addressed that here. It just doesn't feel like its been addressed fully.
I liked
The battery's strong performance was really amazing, as was the ease of connecting the Torch to a Mac.
The media capabilities have been well thought out and the handset really does have a premium look and feel.
RIM hasn't forgotten its messaging roots and continues to lead the way as well as with calls which held a signal and were clear at both ends of the line.
I disliked
The price of apps in BlackBerry's App World are still relatively high. Also, typing wasn't as easy as it could be with an onscreen keyboard that felt like it wasn't up to the job, and a physical keyboard that we were slow to get used to.
The browser is a huge improvement, but still lacks flash which is a big omission since HTC has proven it can be incorporated well. RIM's decision not to include a holder in the box will irritate some and annoying if you have paid upwards of £400 for a SIM-free model.
Verdict
Against other models, like the HTC Desire or the iPhone, BlackBerry is the obvious corporate choice – no other manufacturer can match it in terms of the control and security that BlackBerry Enterprise Server offers. And when it comes to competing against them with its media capabilities, RIM has put in a stellar effort.
But it's been outshone and overshadowed by it's younger brother – the Bold 9780. Tellingly, Vodafone is offering it in white trying to encourage more sales of a handset that's only been out a matter of months. We're also hearing of the Torch 2, which is due to hit later this year - but there's no denying that the price drop will give those looking at a £600 iPhone 4 pause for thought.
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