PhoneLon

The BlackBerry Torch (pictured left) is the latest release from BlackBerry looking to penetrate the fiercely competitive touchscreen smartphone market; a segment of the market which has grown exponentially in the last twelve months, so much so that it is now recognised as a market of its own.
This is not the first time that BlackBerry have attempted to enter this market however, two previous models in the form of the Storm and Storm 2 (pictured below) looked to try and grab a piece of the market albeit quite unsuccessfully, largely due to their unique and quite unusual piezo ‘clickable’ touchscreens which received very mixed reviews.
The Torch on the other hand, really distances itself from the Storm; it is BlackBerry’s first slider incorporating both a touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, essentially ‘the best of both worlds’. It is a concept that puts the Torch in quite a large bit of ‘middle ground’ sitting between the iPhones/HTC Desire HDs of this world and BlackBerry’s own Curve/Bold series. It creates an interesting debate as to whether the need for such a device exists, but if early sales figures and reviews are any reflection on the future, then it certainly looks as though the Torch will be lighting the way.

The reason for the encouraging reviews is quite clear when you look in a bit more detail at the specifications of this device; a 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen capable of displaying 16 million colours at a resolution of 360 x 480 pixels, a full BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard, 4GB of internal storage, microSD support, microUSB port, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 5 megapixel camera and of course, the latest iteration of BlackBerry software – OS 6.0 which has been heavily optimised for touchscreen use.
Of course, as with any BlackBerry, the real attraction of the Torch is the exceptional push email services and BlackBerry Messenger; features which will essentially let you instantly message any other BlackBerry user, anywhere in the world. There is also access to third party applications thanks to BlackBerry Appworld, BlackBerry’s answer to the App Store in which you’ll find a huge selection of games and applications ranging from horoscopes to Sudoku and everything in between.
Aside from all of the features and specifications mentioned above, the Torch is quite possibly the best looking addition to the BlackBerry family with its compact looking design and sleek curves it really is a good looking phone from any angle and is a welcome break from the usual smartphone form factor adopted by the likes of HTC, Apple, Samsung et al.

BlackBerry have announced their first ever slide phone, the 9800 Torch. The somewhat strangely named handset utilises both a Touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, hidden by it’s slider mechanism. The BlackBerry slider has been long rumoured and appears as though the rumours and indeed the leaked images were spot on. The Torch incorporates a 3.2 inch touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard which looks to be a carbon copy of the phenomenal Bold 9700 keyboard. Ex-BlackBerry Storm/Storm 2 users can rejoice in the fact that the ‘clickable’ SurePress screen has been ditched in favour of a standard capacitive unit.

In terms of other specs, the 9800 includes 3G connectivity as well as Wi-Fi (b/g/n) and Bluetooth with GPS rounding off what will be surely be brilliant all-round connectivity, as with BlackBerry’s Bold Series. There’s 512MB of RAM under the hood and a whopping 4GB of internal memory for storing media and applications; though, for those that require more fear not, the Torch 9800 supports MicroSD expansion up to 32GB meaning that you could potentially carry 36GB of data with you at any one time.The Torch also gets an uprated camera from previous BlackBerry models, coming in with a 5.0 megapixel camera and flash.

The most interesting part of the Torch however, is the inclusion of the new BlackBerry OS 6, which is said to give the OS a long over due update to bring it in line with it’s rivals, namely Android, IOS 4 and Windows Mobile. We can’t comment first hand on whether or not it has achieved this, but reports circulating on the net, seem to be very praise worthy of the Torch. Reports have said that despite the low clock speed of the CPU (624 MHz, where the Desire is 1 GHz for example) the Torch still seems to be relatively snappy and seems to take most things happily in it’s stride. The biggest update in the OS for most however, is the update to the Internet browser which has been a little behind the times to say the least. Rest assured however that the new browser is significantly improved; it’s faster, simpler, better looking and it’s even HTML5 friendly.

Well, it seems the Torch is a hugely improved attempt at breaking into the Touchscreen market from RIM (Blackberry) but is it enough? What do you think of the Torch, will you be buying it? Let us know in the comments section below. For those that can’t wait for the Torch to be released, Click Here to check out our full BlackBerry range.