The BlackBerry Torch 9800 has a huge deal riding on it. RIM’s doing just fine in sales, but the persistent slagging off it gets in the press for its attempts – or lack there of – at creating a stylish smartphone that’s consumer friendly and on a par with the Androids and iPhones of this world mean it’s time for a shift in gear.
Touchscreen QWERTY sliding phones are still a rarity, and the moniker change for BlackBerry 6 is part of RIM’s plan to grab back some of that elusive mindshare. RIM co-CEO Jim Ballsillie even says the software is a “quantum leap” beyond the competition. Is it? We nabbed one of the first BlackBerry Torch 9800 UK models to find out. See for yourself in our great big British BlackBerry Torch review right here.
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch review
BlackBerry Torch review: BlackBerry 6
BlackBerry Torch review: Build
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch 9800 coverage
BlackBerry Torch 9800 official
BlackBerry Torch 9800: all the official photos
BlackBerry Torch 9800: hands on first impressions
BlackBerry Torch 9800 exclusive UK preview
BlackBerry 6 video: Six secrets revealed
BlackBerry Torch 9800 unboxed: photos
We can’t give a one size fits all answer as to whether you should buy the BlackBerry Torch 9800 – that depends on whether you’ve ever tasted the glory, the speed of a top end smartphone running iOS, Android, or hell, even webOS. If you have, there’s nothing here that will tempt you back. But if you adore RIM’s keyboards, push email and need a ‘Berry to get on your corporate network, there’s just enough here to satisfy you and merit the price. That’s both RIM’s huge one up over rivals, and its undoing at the same time. This audience it relies on for loving its familiarity is a crutch.
We can however refute Ballsie’s proclamation: BlackBerry 6 on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is not a quantum leap over anything or any rival. Nor for that matter is the hardware, which is a disappointment after the delightful design of the BlackBerry Bold 9700.
We suppose it’s some consolation that the QWERTY keyboard on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is still the best in the business. You can race through emails on it like handsets on no other platform. Nothing else comes close, except other BlackBerrys. But it’s just not a lustworthy look overall: the chrome finish and ugly curves seem to hark back to RIM’s chunky ‘Berries of circa 2006, and we have no idea what the ribbed condom effect of the back casing is about. The buttons below the screen suffer from the same problem as those on the original 2008 Storm: they’re bloody hard to push down. And the camera? It’s a five megapixel number, but the pixels aren’t pulling their weight: check out the thoroughly ordinary quality of the (SD) video recording below:
We could go on, and in fact we have in our BlackBerry Torch review: Build section, but we’ll voice our biggest complaint with the whole package now: the screen.
The 3.2-inch capacitive screen on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is responsive, and the onscreen QWERTY keyboard is surprisingly usable. But the 480×360 resolution is a bitter blast from the past: it’s the same as the 2008 BlackBerry Storm, or 2007 original iPhone.
This isn’t nitpicking, and it’s not that we’ve been spoiled by glorious display on phones from Apple, Samsung and HTC. It’s genuinely aggravating to be able to see the pixels, and it’s a particular problem on a phone where reading email is such a prime feature. If this BlackPad is real, we really hope RIM ups the resolution or it won’t be able to market it as an e-reader, that’s for sure. We shouldn’t have to put up with this now, and we don’t have to.
BlackBerry 6
What might appease you – and if you’re locked into a BlackBerry Enterprise network, may even outright please you – is the BlackBerry 6 OS on the BlackBerry Torch 9800. RIM’s not blown away the competition, or defied physics like its executives have promised, but it does push the BlackBerry experience back onto the cusp of being modern.
As RIM has promised, the BlackBerry 6 browser is completely overhauled. After years of complaining about it come every BlackBerry review, we can now finally say that it doesn’t give us a migraine. It loads pages at a clip, pinch to zoom works, and the tabbed browsing (Yes, actual tabs – welcome to 2007, RIM) pane is very smooth for cycling through various pages. It’s by no means a benchmark browser in real terms: embedded videos, even YouTube clips, leave big ol’ blank spaces on a page. Why no option to see HTML5 YouTube videos? But it works – and it’s enough to give hope that the likes of Google will bear it in mind for future mobile support.
The Universal Search feature meanwhile works does a great job of pulling up relevant info quickly, while simultaneously giving you the option to search Google, YouTube, Google Local Search or the App World straight from the homescreen. Only Palm’s webOS phones do this better, and it’s one of the real highlights of BlackBerry 6 on the BlackBerry Torch 9800.
Unfortunately, touches like this, along with integrated podcasts support in an otherwise unchanged but reasonable media player, make the strange UI in touchscreen BlackBerry 6 all the more odd. It’s puzzling being able to navigate with the touchscreen or the trackpad, and even weirder when a long press of the screen brings up a different context menu in certain apps. Sometimes.
We’re relieved to report though that BlackBerry app support on BlackBerry 6 doesn’t appear to be a problem at all as it was a month ago at US launch – all important Google apps like Sync and Maps run just fine (though no pinch to zoom, sniff), while the other apps we use regularly such as Tube Buddy and PayPal are up to the task too.
The official Facebook and Twitter apps come preloaded on the BlackBerry Torch, by the way: updates from both also appear in the rather excellent Social Feeds app which shows everything from Facebook and Twitter, along with various popular chat clients (BBM, Google Talk, AIM, MSN), and doesn’t get bogged down from Twitter spam overload as other phones do when attempting to sync in the background.
But you can see the relics that RIM’s refused to let go of in BlackBerry 6, and their presence is more glaring than ever now. BlackBerry Maps is impossibly awful: we struggle to understand how RIM has managed to make something so slow and unhelpful (The GPS works just fine with Google Maps, but BlackBerry’s own app insists our location is unknown still).
BlackBerry Messenger, though wildly popular, looks like Sarah Jessica Parker on a bad day without the make up, and the preloaded games are STILL BrickBreaker and Word Mole. We’re not expecting Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars, but it’d be nice to see some glimmer of potential for an Angry Birds-esque sensation on the platform. And most noticeably, that bloomin’ whirring clock is still around, choking your phone should you open one too many programs at the same time, or just click innocently on a link. RIM was strangely proud of the 624MHz CPU powering the BlackBerry Torch 9800 at launch: we’re not sure why.
All in all, we’re actually left looking forward to BlackBerry 6 updates rolling out on current BlackBerry smartphones, rather than pleased with the BlackBerry Torch itself. It says a lot that we came away feeling more a sense of relief that the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is an adequate smartphone, rather than one of revelation at a glorious one.
Three stars isn’t a bad score. The BlackBerry Torch 9800 isn’t a bad phone. Far from it. We just think a good reason is required for you to go with it over all the other incredible options out there now. The keyboard’s one, sure. The best unified inbox on any mobile is another. And you know that battery life isn’t an issue. But we’re running out of reasons now, and they’re starting to feel like excuses instead. Is there another gear change left in you, RIM?
The BlackBerry Torch 9800 has made our best BlackBerry phone Top 5 list, which is why we’ve given it our Recommended rosette. Check out more Top 5s here and find out more about how they work with our Top 5 guarantee.
The BlackBerry Torch is available now at phones4u.co.uk
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch review
BlackBerry Torch review: BlackBerry 6
BlackBerry Torch review: Build
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch 9800 coverage
BlackBerry Torch 9800 official
BlackBerry Torch 9800: all the official photos
BlackBerry Torch 9800: hands on first impressions
BlackBerry Torch 9800 exclusive UK preview
BlackBerry 6 video: Six secrets revealed
BlackBerry Torch 9800 unboxed: photos
