Hands On: Blackberry Torch 9800

1. The Best Of Both Worlds

Can the BlackBerry Torch 9800 light RIM’s way to success? A touchscreen QWERTY slider with BlackBerry 6 software goes for search and social skills.

It’s a touchscreen and a keyboard – and a new BlackBerry OS.

The new BlackBerry Torch 9800 is the first BlackBerry with both a 3.2" 360x480 capacitive touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard, in a slider format. It’s a similar size to the Storm or Bold; 4.4" (5.8" open) by 2.4" and 0.57" thick, and it weighs 5.68 ounces. It has 4GB of memory (and 512MB of flash memory for storing apps) and comes with a 4GB microSD card.

Announced today, it will be available exclusively from AT&T on August 12^th for $199 (with $15 and $25 data plans). It’s also the first BlackBerry to run the new BlackBerry 6 OS and it’s actually named for the WebKit-based Torch browser that RIM bought last year, which also makes its debut in BlackBerry 6. Amazingly, it’s also the first BlackBerry that will ship with App World pre-installed; and for the first time you’ll be able to buy apps and charge them to your phone bill.

AT&T will add some features of its own, including its Visual Voicemail and Web Video Search; the new text message interface works with AT&T’s group messaging so you can send a text to up to ten people at once, and search for a location or send a map within a text message.

The touchscreen is bright, clear, colorful and very responsive and the slider keyboard isn’t a compromise. The keys have a very light and sensitive feel--it is easy to move between keys, so it's comfortable to type on and although the keys are quite tightly packed into the space they feel as if they're more widely separated because of the distinct curve on the profile of each key. There isn't a lot of space between the top of the top row of keys and the bottom of the slider so you may bump your thumbs from time to time especially if you have large hands, which can make you hit the wrong key - that's a problem with all slider phones and despite the body of the keyboard being a little shallower than most BlackBerry models this is still an excellent BlackBerry keyboard.  

RIM always makes a new version of the BlackBerry OS available for recent BlackBerry models; so far it’s announced that BlackBerry 6 will be available as an upgrade for the Bold 9650 and 9700 and the Pearl 3G but we were also told there will be “further announcements.”