BlackBerry Torch 9800 Review
In certain ways, RIM aims to shoot its own foot this year by designing smartphones that are functional enough for businesses and yet offer no new compelling features for anybody else. The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is just a step in the right direction, except that it is quite a small one at that. There has been heavy competition on this for the past few years from some of the best sellers such as the iPhone 4 and the recent android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S and the HTC Desire. The Torch 9800 is RIM’s latest and greatest attempt to tackle the overwhelming TouchScreen technology. In an effort to do this task to perfection, RIM has revamped its software to be more finger-friendly and retain the beloved keyboard of BlackBerry. So, will the BlackBerry Torch 9800 be able to push RIM back to the sharp end of the smartphone market; well, let us find out.
Design:
Differs from the classics:
A classic RIM BlackBerry possesses a landscape display with a QWERTY keyboard beneath it, just like the BlackBerry Bold 9700. But instead of sticking with this landscape look for the new Touchscreen 9800 Torch, RIM has opted to go for a tall and slim structure. The keyboard slides out of the screen in the vertical way, making the phone narrower than it has to be. This kind of set-up also makes the phone feel top-heavy when it is slide open. In fact, the Torch feels quite bulky weighing about 161g and poking out 15mm thick.
The Touchscreen:
Though the BlackBerry 9800 Smartphone has employed an improved touchscreen, in many ways it proves to be a faint reminder of the Palm Pre and in a lot of ways even the BlackBerry Storm 2 that have the bulky heft and 3.2” screen size in common. However this touchscreen is highly responsive, which is a surprise, especially after the disaster in form of Storm and considering that it has exactly the same pixel resolution of 480 x 360 pixels or 188 pixels per inch. Thankfully, the Torch does not have the large click panel that is used to make selections. RIM seems to have made the right decision with that, to make sure that the screen has a tactile response to the finger clicks, but the implementation seems to be poor and ended up not working. When scrolling through lists of status updates, for example, the phone occasionally became confused about whether we were tapping or scrolling. It is not a deal-breaker, because the phone’s still very usable, but the Torch is not as slick as some of its competitors. Torch has ditched all the unwanted stuff and encourages the basic finger clicks, pinch in and out and a smooth glide over the screen; all of which, works remarkably well without any hiccups. RIM has done a good job of revamping its BlackBerry software to take advantage of the touchscreen, and it has made almost everything poke-able and prod-able.
Controls:
If you are not too pleased with the touchscreen, you do have the physical controls to control most stuff. There is the optical trackpad, keyboard shortcuts, and menus and back keys. As time flies by, you will surely figure out a rhythm to move around the Torch in a way that works for you.
The Keyboard:
All the BlackBerry users are aware of the fact that all of the recent phones from RIM have had excellent QWERTY keyboards; the Curve for instance, has an incredible keyboard. It is the raised keys, spacing and the overall excellent size, designing of these keyboards that draw the business crowd who do not really give anything about the augmented reality apps and games; they just ask “does it do good email”. Unfortunately, the Torch 9800 seems to have a few issues with messaging and the main trouble is with the smaller sized QWERTY keyboard. It seems to feel a bit truncated, though it is exactly the same shape as that of the Curve. RIM had to end up making a smaller keyboard just as to fit the slider under the screen. Though it might just be a fraction of the centimetre, it will still seem to be too much to handle while typing. It is just OK to use, but not as good as the one on BlackBerry 9700. It also has a lip around it, so it hinders your thumbs while typing, and they do not seem to possess a firm response as you might like.
BlackBerry Torch 9800 Interface:
Menus:
The menus on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 Touch Screen Phone offer you with smorgasbord of choices, like for everything on the device. You will find ten different ways to do stuff, everything from typing a word to sending a mail. You might find this interface exhaustive or exhausting; it all depends on how your mind works. Though both iPhone and the Torch are touch-screen phones, we can say the Torch as an antithesis of the iPhone, which can seem excessively simple, with its unchanging home screen of icons, single home button, and large, almost childlike, user interface buttons. Whereas, with the Torch, on the home screen alone, you have a sliding menu that goes up and down, revealing icons related to the phone’s features. It also runs side to side, to reveal sub-groups of your favourite and most-used apps. There’s a notification area that slides open with a touch to show your various emails and Facebook updates. Tap the speaker icon to set the phone to one of seven sound modes, from silent to tooting like a one-man band. Tap the connection icon on the other side of the screen to control Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and alarms. The number of options provided by the home screen is almost overwhelming.
Universal Search:
Be aware that this is not one of those phones that are easy to master. Our curious minds of exploration often left us confused, as we were presented with long menus of choices. It is totally an information firehose, which could be real fun if you hate being mollycoddled by childish user interfaces, or could be overwhelming, especially if you have never used a BlackBerry before. A new feature on the Torch that will help you with this information overload is known as Universal Search. Just start typing in the word and it will bring up search results from your Apps, Contacts and Messages. It also gives you an option to dial the text as number or search for it on YouTube or Google.
BlackBerry OS6:
The heart of any smartphone is its mobile OS platform that makes it quite easy to download new apps and get more out of it. The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is one of the first phones to be using the BlackBerry 6 OS. This operating system has a slick icon centric approach that is not that different from the OS 5 that uses the same kind of colourful outlined app icons, but it does have a few new tweaks that do enhance the user experience quite a deal. One of such enhancements is that, similar to the HTC Sense interface, you will be able to flick to right or left to reveal the additional home screens and Apps and in the Torch you will find a handful of the screens such as the Frequent, Downloads, Media, Favourite and All. Like the Apple iPhone, you are allowed to move the icons around each of the home screens, but we found it’s functioning to be a bit awkward. The way it can be moved is the usual way of click, hold, touch on Move and transfer the app to the place you want to, but we found that the probability that you might press on the wrong area and not even move the icon is very high.
Social Networking on BlackBerry:
Another enhancement to the BlackBerry OS6 that is just another “me too” has to do with its Social Networking capabilities. Palm was the one to start all of the fuss by aggregating the feeds into a single list, but Android managed to literally aggregate the idea on most of its recent models like the Evo and Incredible. On the Torch 9800, you will be able to see the status updates on Twitter, Facebook and most of the other sites in the app known as Social Feeds. RIM has also provided with an easy way to view them in separate columns or as a combined one. The issue here is that, this is exactly not real aggregation and it is just an app that shows you the feed updates and there is simply no way that you could create a new contact from Facebook and these feeds are not shown elsewhere, like in one of the home screens. There also no pop up messages from Twitter or Facebook friends. That is a bad effort from RIM as, even the low end Kin smartphones do an excellent job in making Social Networking a part of using the phone on a day to day basis and not just a desperate app. However, it is not all bad as the Torch 9800 does provide you with a way to upload the images you take on the phone directly to Facebook and even manages to resize them for you on the go.
Features:
Processor and Memory:
The biggest trouble that BlackBerry Torch 9800 faces is that, it has a sluggish processor, running at just 600MHz. It also includes 512MB of memory built-in, along with a 4GB microSD memory card, which can be upped to 32GB.
Apps:
As far as the App selection is concerned, RIM has stuck to the BlackBerry productivity mantra. The third party apps available will not get any innovation awards; though they are functional and handy, they cannot be said to be anywhere near amazing.
Enterprise tools:
Let alone the Apps, one area where a BlackBerry cannot be beaten is its enterprise tools which includes the BlackBerry server. These servers aids businesses keeping track of the smartphone as an asset and even control some of the features on the device, like when you will be able to make calls. This kind of an infrastructure is not available for Android phone and iPhone smartphones; that is, at least not as a first party option.
Camera:
Camera is another feature that BlackBerry Torch has borrowed from Storm, apart from the design. BlackBerry Torch 9800 sports a 5 mega pixel camera that captures some crisp and colourful still pictures. You can also get your hands on the scene settings to adjust the camera to fit to a specific scenario like low light landscape or the close-up portrait shots that seems to adjust accurately to the skin tones. You will also find several options to play slideshows, setting images as wall paper, getting to the properties of image and even sending the image via email or just uploading it to Facebook. The device even allows you to attach the GPS coordinates. The only issue with this is that, the phone tends to take up to a minute to acquire the GPS data. However, this is not an issue to worry about as, once you have a lock, the torch does an excellent job of using that GPS data. For instance, when an image is sent through email, the phone will automatically add the name of the city to each image. As soon as the images are off-loaded, they can be opened in Apps like Google Maps to see when you had taken the photos.
Video:
Video camera mode is also available in Torch 9800 Smartphone, which seems to work well when it comes to basic video recording, but lacks any of the advanced features such as the white balance setting. The output too is only available in 3GP formats, which works only with phones with a smaller storage, but loses very less in quality. Though the video camera is capable of recording only VGA quality, that cannot be used as too much of a negative aspect as a lot of phones that do have HD video recording and playback do not actually offer any premium footage for that matter.
Messaging:
Messaging is hampered a little by the un-tacky physical keyboard. However, you do have the option of on-screen keyboard, if you feel too lazy to open the physical keyboard. The onscreen keyboard has no issues and we were able to type out some accurate messages. The predictive texts will come in quite handy if at all you make any mistakes. We also loved the built-in spell checker and cursor which makes selecting parts of text easy. You have the option of portrait and landscape Qwerty keyboards, a 12-key alphanumeric keyboard, and the SureType option, which offers two letters per key.
As we had mentioned earlier, the BlackBerry Torch has quite a sluggish processor and so, when you open attachments, there are obvious delays and the phone spins a few circles before opening a PDF or word file. However, finally they do manage to open and the 9800 does support a lot of formats, but the wait is just annoying. The slow processing power also gives the Torch a hard time multitasking, for instance when you want to copy a portion of a text or switch to another app. At times, there are even pauses that last for two full seconds or more as Torch is processing the request. The worst part here is that, the Torch even prompts you to click OK for deleting a message, which again results in a pause that lasts much longer. This kind of stuff up seriously harms the messaging experience as you may never know when the device might just end up hanging. On some of the other faster android phones such as the HTC Desire, you will be able to open the attachments faster and get your work done faster. With BlackBerry Messenger, you can IM other BlackBerry users for free, anywhere in the world.
Email:
BlackBerry devices are the masters of mobile email, but you do need a BlackBerry contract to take advantage of their powers. Push email means that you will be able to get your messages right away, without having to wait for the phone to check the server, although most smart phones have caught up to BlackBerry in offering this feature. We found that adding new email accounts to the Torch 9800 was easier than ever, and we were impressed by how it handled our Google Apps account without any fuss or advanced set-up required. The email program even handles functions specific to Google, such as the ability to archive a message rather than delete it.
Torch WebKit Browser:
We are sure that by now, you must have wondered at least once why the BlackBerry 9800 has been named as “Torch”. Well, it gets its name from the webkit browser which was designed by Torch, a company acquired by RIM. The webkit proves to be one of the highlights of the device. The browser has received a major overhaul, which is good news, especially since BlackBerry’s older browser was our least favourite way to surf on a mobile phone. The new browser is a big improvement, and it does a good job of rendering Web pages accurately. Surprisingly, even with such a slow processor, the browser works fast and fine, with hardly any slowdowns and pauses. On this browser, it is easy to flick through the sites, pinch and spread to get a better view of text and graphics and the finger clicks on the links. This browser sports a simple URL field with a feature to quickly make bookmarks, add the page to home screen, send URL, view history and lots more. You will also find an icon for viewing the open pages. Apart from this most of the screen’s real estate has been reserved for the site. On testing, the browser was able to open the sites quickly and format them properly sans any glitches. Like most of the other cursed smartphones in UK, the Torch also has its Flash support limited to simple Flash Lite pages.
Organising Apps:
There is no phone in the current market to challenge the productivity and organising apps that is available on the RIM BlackBerry Torch 9800. They are just so typical for this platform. There is a colourful calendar, a selection of office reading applications and the usual alarm clock including the similar set of offerings. The Torch 9800 is one of the first hansdsets from RIM to come with the BlackBerry App World in box, which offers instant access to the portal. The portal, which already offered access to a wealth of apps, has since been upgraded to BlackBerry App World 2.0, hence offering a much better and sleeker experience. Though it is nowhere near what the App Stores of the Android phones offer, but it still has a decent amount of fairly useful apps.
Multimedia:
When it comes to multimedia, the Android phones and iphones have such a huge advantage over BlackBerry phones, that it is almost embarrassing. There is no such thing as an “easy way” to add videos and movies to the Torch or add music using PC or Mac tool and what a pity, no support for services like Amazon for purchasing songs. Having said that, all is not that bad with the Torch, watching video was pretty decent and though the HVGA screen might be a bit of low resolution compared to the high faulting WVGA of the HTC Desire or the Retina Display of the iPhone 4, but it is quite adequate for some occasional movie fun.
Connectivity:
Like most of the recent smartphones, the Torch 9800 too has a decent set of connectivity options. It sports Bluetooth including the latest audio standards for Bluetooth Stereo, WiFi and the Carrier signal. The WiFi seems to work just fine, with a steady connection even over 802.11n and at Public hotspot. The call signal quality is pretty smooth and there were no dropouts during calls or when checking mail over a 3G connection and never encountered any signal loss issues. There was only a minor glitch when the BlackBerry 9800 was tested with a system and though the phone works fine while swapping of data, the profiles did not work properly and is not able to transfer the files from the device. However, when the Torch is connected to the system via USB, data transfer is just perfect.
Performance:
Camera Performance:
The camera handles continuous focus well and hence, does not lock just the subject and focus. Even after getting a good focus, if the camera is moved for a minute, it will still continue to focus. This resulted in very few images that turned out to be blurred in a way that they do on most of the other smartphones. But the flash on the Torch seems to be a little underpowered , so you need to be close to the subject to make it work properly. Differing light levels are handled well by the Torch’s camera; however, the brighter surfaces seem to steal the focus. The larger scenes are handled well, with most detail being captured. Though the background is a bit soft, Torch’s landscape shots are decent, with some good detail. Unfortunately, the slow processor is a trouble maker with the camera too; there were a few pauses when viewing images.
Call Quality:
A smartphone cannot be successful just with all its frills or Apps, Music and Games, it should also have a strong calling functionality. And, RIM BlackBerry has managed to strike a good balance in this regard. Torch is reasonably a good phone and to begin with, you will find the dialler on the 3.2” screen to be quite large. If that is not for you, just slide out the keyboard and you can dial quicker with the number key; we feel that the softkeys work better. As we had mentioned earlier, there is no way to pull any of the facebook contacts to the dial pad or the contacts list and on the same note, there was no way to add contacts easily from the web. Having said that, on a better note, the contacts can be easily searched up, all you have to do is, just start typing a name in the search field. You will also be able to add a wealth of information to your contacts including birthdays and anniversaries. And the best thing is that, you will also be able add custom fields to the contacts. The call quality is excellent and picked up voice well. The volume controls that are slightly raised will allow you to crank up the volume of the call higher than most smartphones.
Battery Life:
Moving on to the battery life, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 Slider Phone offers about five hours of talk time on one charge and about eighteen days standby before it gets power hungry again. This is about what the specifications from RIM claims. This battery life is much longer than some of the recent Android phones such as the Desire. The high battery life makes the Torch a more useful phone; no matter how stunning the HD displays on the other phones maybe, they simply become pointless if the phone dies.
Warranty:
RIM offers BlackBerry Torch one year warranty for parts and labour.
Verdict:
If you already own a BlackBerry, you might not want the Torch or, even if you do not you might not want it, even though it is the best BlackBerry ever. The most unfortunate fact about this slider phone is that, it is not particularly suited for the diehard BlackBerry fans as the QWERTY keyboard proved to be too cramped and processor too was very small to keep up with the finger clicking productivity apps that the phone relies on. Disappointingly, the chunky design and low-resolution display prevents the Torch 9800 from unseating the best of smartphone rivals. Though the latest version of the BlackBerry OS is easy to use than its previous version, with the BlackBerry 6 OS, RIM seems to have merely borrowed a few ideas from HTC Sense. At 600MHz, the Torch is just too slow to be taken seriously against much faster models running at 1GHz. All is not grey with the Torch, there are plenty of business apps and you can deploy an enterprise server to track the devices as a business asset. The camera works quite well and has serviceable scene selectors, and the touchscreen works smoothly.
For a phone that is supposed to be the poster child of the new BlackBerry 6 OS, we hoped for a lot more. Nevertheless, if you need an email powerhouse, your company insists on the security of a BlackBerry, or you love the feeling of total information awareness, the Torch has plenty of pluses. You will be able to get the Torch for free on a £35-a-month contract or for around £480 unlocked and SIM-free.
BlackBerry Torch 9800 Smartphone – Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | RIM |
| Model Name | BlackBerry Torch 9800 |
| Announced | August 2010 |
| Form factor | Slider phone |
| Colours available | Black, White, Dark Orange |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 111 x 62 x 14.6 mm |
| Weight | 161 g |
| Display Size | 3.2 inches |
| Display Type | TFT capacitive touchscreen |
| Display Resolution | 360 x 480 pixels |
| Display features | Light-sensing, proximity-detecting screen User-selectable font size |
| Colours supported | 16M colours |
| Input and Navigation | Trackpad Touch screen with on-screen keyboard: portrait SureType®, QWERTY and multi-tap, landscape QWERTY, portrait QWERTY Slide-out QWERTY ESC key to right of trackpad Menu key to left of trackpad Keyboard backlighting |
| Headset jack | 3.5mm stereo headset jack |
| Speakerphone | Built-in speakerphone M3/T3 (open position) rating for hearing aids |
| Phonebook Memory | Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall |
| Call records | Yes |
| Memory | 4GB storage, 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM |
| Card Slot | microSD, up to 32GB, 4GB card included |
| 2G | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
| 3G Network | HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 /800 |
| Modem | RIM® wireless modem Tethered modem capability |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11 b/g/n WPA / WPA2 Personal and Enterprise Cisco CCX certified Wi-Fi® access to BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Wi-Fi access to BlackBerry® Internet Bundle Support for UMA (carrier-dependent) |
| CPU | 624 MHz processor |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth® v2.1 +EDR Mono/stereo headset Hands-free operation Phone book access profile (PBAP) Serial port profile SIM access profile Stereo audio (A2DP/AVCRP) Dial-up networking (DUN) |
| Camera | 5 MP |
| Features | 2592 ? 1944 pixels Autofocus LED flash 2.5X digital zoom 11 picture-taking modes Video recording Geo-tagging Continuous auto-focus Image stabilisation |
| Video camera | VGA@24fps |
| Media player | MP3, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, AMR-NB, MIDI, Flac, Ogg Vorbis |
| Video player | MPEG4, H.263, MPEG4 Part 2 Simple Profile, H.264, WMV |
| Ringtones and Notifications | Polyphonic/MIDI ringtones MP3 ringtones Vibrate mode On-screen LED indicator User configurable |
| OS | BlackBerry OS 6.0 |
| Messaging | SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM |
| Browser | HTML |
| Radio | No |
| Games | Yes + downloadable |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS support |
| Office | Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) Social feeds BlackBerry maps Organizer Voice memo/dial |
| Device Security | Password protection with keyboard lock Sleep mode AES or Triple DES encryption with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server (BES) |
| Battery Type | Standard battery, Li-Ion 1300 mAh |
| Battery Standby | 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 playback | Up to 30 h |
| Warranty | One year |