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Hands On With the BlackBerry Torch 9800
adeelarshad82 writes "Research in Motion announced the company's first slider-style BlackBerry, the Torch 9800, which is also the first BlackBerry with both a touch screen and hard keyboard, and the first device to run the new OS 6. The Torch feels and looks very much like a BlackBerry, with the proper BlackBerry Bold-style arrangements of plastic, metal, and glass; there are also BlackBerry fonts on the keys and the now-standard BlackBerry trackpad. The Torch's 3.2-inch, 360-by-480 screen is a standard capacitive LCD touch screen. The screen is bright and sharp, but it's obviously behind the competition in terms of resolution. The Torch has a 5-megapixel camera with VGA video recording, Bluetooth 2.1, 512 MB of program memory, 4 GB of built-in storage, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The Torch has the same 624-MHz Marvell processor as the existing BlackBerry Bold. The new BlackBerry 6 OS adds touch to the interface mix. RIM appears to have totally rewritten its media apps. There's a new Desktop Manager coming with BlackBerry 6, and a Social Feeds app that combines Twitter, Facebook, and various instant messaging conversations."
The hardware looks decent (except for that low-res screen...wtf?), but I'm not entirely sold on the new OS revision.
Disclosure: I've never been much a fan of Blackberry OS.
Living With a Nerd
How you like RIM, Jobs?
Any reasons non business people would pick this over the current crop of Android devices or iPhones?
Another cellphone company that want's to shove AT&T down my throat. No thanks.
According to Slashdot, this phone already outsold the iPhone in the last quarter :)
RIM is like Microsoft: not the best made stuff, but business adopted it so it's a standard of sorts.
I hate that my workplace will buy us Blackberries but won't go iPhone (or whatever). I end up swapping the SIM to my personal iPhone and all is well but it's still wear and tear on my own stuff.
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Trolling is a art,
Surprised it isn't in the summary, but this phone is also the first Blackberry to have a WebKit based browser which is big news.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
I'd take a HTC smart phone over blackberry any day of the week.
cat
I agree. I happen to... mostly... Like my provider. Even though they don't always have the uber popular phones like the i-phone. And they completely seem to miss the point about 'rugged' phones (Nothing since the Moto W450? Really?). But I like the customer service I've gotten, I like my plan, I like my coverage... I just don't like the fact that the phone manufactures are trying to force me to pay full price for the phones I want (instead of changing to their exclusive service vendor, if you can call what AT&T and Verizon do 'service') and then go through the process of jailbreaking them to use them on the network that I like. Makes me feel like a second class citizen...
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
The Torch feels and looks very much like a BlackBerry
Wait. Is that supposed to be a compliment? The only nice things to say about Blackberry relate to their keyboards and enterprise software.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Does anything other than WebKit on this phone not scream lock in? Unless I fell into a time loop, it requires either a slew of Microsoft only software and their own expensive proprietary daemon or administrators to do go through a bunch of bs to send internal information back out to some service to be functional.
So a blackberry with expensive server software or reduced security and pain for your admin vs. iPhone or any Android based phone.
I hope the death of RIM is nearing.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
" Torch's 3.2-inch, 360-by-480 screen is a standard capacitive LCD touch screen. The screen is bright and sharp, but it's obviously behind the competition in terms of resolution. The Torch has a 5-megapixel camera with VGA video recording, Bluetooth 2.1, 512 MB of program memory, 4 GB of built-in storage, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The Torch has the same 624-MHz Marvell processor as the existing BlackBerry Bold. The new BlackBerry 6 OS adds touch to the interface mix......... bla bla blah" So about half will still break in the first 6 months, right? I've had just about every BB since they first had phone capability, and they basically suck at everything except for writing emails (mostly). The newer they are the more easily they break.
There is a reason why RIM is referred to as "RIMT&T" internally ... most of the executives come from AT&T (CIO, multiple VPs, directors, managers, consultants, peons).
Is it any wonder AT&T gets all the new products first?
The phone will be dubbed the "Blackberry Flashlight 9800" for UK owners
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
AT&T is hardly the only mobile carrier to offer BlackBerry handsets. Blame T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon for not outbidding AT&T to be first to carry this model.
Breakfast served all day!
Makes me feel like a second class citizen...
Big corporations are the first class citizens.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
...Saudia Arabia and the UAE?
As an indie BB developer, I've mixed impressions here. The changes to OS6 look very promising (I'll be digging in more tonight since they released the SDK today, but so far they look good -- and this on top of a platform that was pretty solid to begin with, even if not the flashiest out there.) There are also some cool features - like gesture support on the trackpad, integrated search, etc - which I'm looking forward to playing with.
A lot of things I've had to manually code workarounds for are now part of the OS. This is a two-edged sword though: I still need to support older platforms (thus must keep my legacy code); yet also want to have the more efficient/integrated advantage that comes with using native APIs. It's not *too* painful as I've already determined handling for this scenario in previous OS versions (5.0, 4.7, 4.6, 4.5, 4.3...) ... but it is frustrating as some of these things really should have been there all along. (On the other hand: this isn't a problem specific to BB. -- it's a problem with developing against any platform that undergoes significant improvements over time.)
I was looking forward to the Torch hardware itself - since my first BB (8700c) I was thinking it would be really cool if they found a way to merge their keyboard with the Palm touchscreens. When I heard about it, I had geekgasms. Now that I'm seeing the specs... my reaction is mixed. I'm seeing a lot of feedback about the relatively slow processor (compared to other smartphones); but realistically I don't anticipate that to have much effect. My experience with BB has shown that Well written apps will run well; poorly written apps will run poorly; but the core OS will remain snappy. As long as that doesn't change, I'm not too concerned about the CPU speed. (the only exception was the 8800 - that thing was dog-slow... don't know what they were thinking.) Even the RAM doesn't bother me - though I am still h oping we'll see the ability to run apps off of SD card or at least on-board flash. Either of these would make RAM an absolute non-issue.
What disappoints me is the screen resolution: this device has the same resolution as my 9700-- which has a much smaller screen. I really expected this to get bumped up a notch in this release, and the fact that it hasn't has me debating whether i want to get the Torch, or wait for the Flaming Torch or whatever the next version of the hardware will be. Considering how long I've been wanting exactly this device, the idea of waiting for a next rev is irksome.
Overall: the OS looks good. The API improvements make a solid system even better. The new tools for web-based apps look very promising, and a vast improvement over their previous iteration. The hardware is "meh", but still a step up; I only wish the screen were better resolution. The fact that they're now including app store with the OS itself is also a huge improvement: too many people think that the crapware links that AT&T/whoever pushes to the phone are the extent of the BB app selection, and that's not the case. Hopefully this push (along with their planned marketing) will make both developers and consumers more aware that BB is a good platform for apps.
Sounds like, unlike Apple, Palm or Android, they wrote a multi-threaded OS capable of running WebKit from scratch, rather then being based on Linux or BSD.
Although it's not really that hard if only have to support limited hardware you've designed yourself and you have ready access graduates from one of the most respected Computer Science programs in the world (University of Waterloo).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Compared to their competitors: slower processor, less memory, lower-res smaller screen, and still no real app solution. Basically, anything that people can say about Blackberries over their competition is "Well, they do email really well."
It's kind of a shame. They appear to have nothing to prevent their demise.
RIM needs a new OS. This device is even worse than what I expected them to come out with.
I read all the way to the end of one of TFAs before realizing it's "torch", not "touch."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
When did RIM start making flashlights? Are they selling it under that same name in the UK?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...if you can call what AT&T and Verizon do 'service'...
I dunno, from reading around here they seem to "service" (definition 12) their customers quite well...
Seriously, we were a BB + BES shop for 7 years. We started out with the old datatac 857 units on skytel. Sure they were ahead of the curve at one time, but compared to iphone or android, there really is no comparison. We have 50-100 iphones configured with Active Sync (via VPN for security), and rarely receive user tickets. BlackBerry on the other hand is continually failing, BES lock ups, rendering by the browser and MDSCS server, is somewhat embarrassing, to the point where we have deployed netbooks (along with laptops) to execs who require web browsing. Hopefully they're looking to the future, but it sounds as though RIM may be the new Palm
Battery life is about 20% lower (1500mAh down to 1300 or so), and now it has to power a bigger ,touch-capable screen. Doesn't look good for battery life.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
360x480 is pretty old hat these days. When are they going to launch something with comparable screen resolution to the iPhone 4?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
In the UK market, the Blackberry is now supposed to be the number one choice amongst teens, for the simple reason that it is the easiest to do text messaging on.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
More specifically, does it have anything to do with RIM's purchase of QNX last year?
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- aqk
F U