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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."
How you like RIM, Jobs?
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 :)
I don't get this artificial distinction between "business" users and "non business" users.
I carry a blackberry for business. But I explicitly chose a model that has MP3, WiFi, camera, and GPS because those features made it a whole lot more useful to me as a personal device.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
They think they know better than people who have used both.
Whale
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.
.
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 don't get this artificial distinction between "business" users and "non business" users.
Business user: I need fast push access to e-mail and critical documents wherever I go. I don't care about anything else.
Personal user: LOL i just want 2 play sum farmville and take sum pictures of my doggie and put it on fabo and omg twitter i liek dont care if it works all the time k just as long as its pretty pretty!!!!1111ONE00110001
Well, there's the thing. You're carrying it for business, but if you didn't need it for that, would you get one?
I'd take a HTC smart phone over blackberry any day of the week.
cat
Me as well. But to be fair if it wasn't for the business side I would already be Android. Now that I am stuck on sprint and RIM deciding that their good one can only be AT&T. I think....Maybe....I might....go with the evo. Rooted so I can wipe out the sprint crap. I will still be able to ssh to my servers. Can calendar everything through Gmail. With 4g and apps. I think I can slide myself off my crackberry and get some fun with my work.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Regardless of whether I need it for business, I have to say I kind of like having one device in my pocket that functions as a photo album, web browser, mp3 player, digital camera, gps nav device, map book, pocket calculator, alarm clock, plus a few dozen other trivial things.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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
Internals are a bit disappointing. Why are they only putting a 624Mhz processor in their new flagship device? HTC, Apple, Moto & Samsung are all using 1ghz ARM variants in their flagship phones--with higher speeds and dual core phones on the near horizon.
Android as activesync support, which exchange and many exchange like email solutions use.
Business user: I need fast push access to e-mail and critical documents wherever I go. I don't care about anything else.
Personal user: LOL i just want 2 play sum farmville and take sum pictures of my doggie and put it on fabo and omg twitter i liek dont care if it works all the time k just as long as its pretty pretty!!!!1111ONE00110001
Youtube? Is that you?
So there is no reason the current crop of Android devices or iPhones would pick the Blackberry Torch 9800 over a non business person?
I suppose that is a true statement, but kind of a weird thing to say.
I protest to the irresponsible depiction of the personal user here! I doubt any personal user could spell 'pretty' correctly two times in a row.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Push email on my iPhone comes in just moments behind the Blackberry (have them both on my desk and just ran a few tests). I find the doc/pdf reader on the Apple device to be MUCH nicer than the crappy BB one.
Trolling is a art,
Meh for the average user, true. Nice to see RiM focusing back on business users without trying to introduce an "iPhone killer".
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
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.
360x480 is lower than phones from 2+ years ago. I guess it's a start?
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
I bet that's why a blackberry can last with heavy usage much better than the others.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I'm also carrying a Blackberry (older Curve 83xx series) for work, and just about anything newer (especially if it had 3G, dear God EDGE is slow up here in the hinterlands!) would be preferable. But, having said that, would I choose another Blackberry for personal use?
Maybe.
I have little experience with any other phone, so I don't have much of a position from which to judge. I have an iPod Touch and typing on it is an exercise in living, screaming hell, so for that and several other reasons the iPhone is pretty much out. Big meaty paws, and a touchscreen like the iPod's do not mix. Resistive screens work OK for me (my wife's Nokia 5800 is pretty OK, but I can use a stylus for the fiddly bits on that one), but I really like an actual keyboard if I'm going to type a lot. I might not type as much on a "personal" phone as I do on my "business" one though.
I'd love a larger screen, but I've come to appreciate the advantages of a real keyboard, so all in all I wouldn't give up a hard keyboard to get a larger screen. I don't really like the idea of flip-out or slide-out phones because of the additional moving parts (I tend to break things with moving parts), but I'd probably consider something like that if the build quality was really, really good.
I know my Blackberry Curve has taken some significant abuse in the two years I've owned it, and has performed like a champ. There are very few reports of problems that I've heard in the 150 or so Blackberries (mixture of 88xx, 83xx Curves, and 81xx Pearls) we run here at the office. So the build quality is top notch, and the no-moving-parts form factor probably helps a lot. After two years, I still get more than a day of solid use on the original battery, and I like being able to charge it everywhere a standard mini-USB cable is available.
I don't like the "application memory" versus "storage memory" scheme of the Blackberry at all. Of course, my Curve only has 32MB of "application memory" so I have to be extremely careful how many applications I have installed, so it's a constant hassle for me. I suppose the newer ones with 512MB of app memory overcome that to a great extent, but I'd rather just have a shared memory pool (I'm sure that's tricky, though, for devices that can take removable memory, and I'd want to be able to add memory or have it come with a very large amount to start with).
I'd probably have to try out an Android, and the decision would most likely be Android versus Blackberry. I run Linux at home, so I like the idea of running Linux on my cell as well. But BlackberryOS has served me very well over the last couple of years, despite its shortcomings.
But I do carry it for work, so I'll probably be forced into another Blackberry if we ever do a hardware refresh. And as long as it performs as well as my Curve does (maybe a little quicker with a better camera and 3G), I'll probably be very happy with it.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Once you have a smart phone, they are damned hard to give up, aren't they?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Meh for the average user, true. Nice to see RiM focusing back on business users without trying to introduce an "iPhone killer".
And how are they focusing on businesses moreso than they already do? It looks like they're missing the forest for the trees by rushing to include every new buzzword-laden technology (Social Feeds! Instant messaging! Facebook!) without actually understanding the underlying themes and trends. To me, that seems like the antithesis of "focusing on business users."
Also, why is it that businesses cannot benefit from the (considerably superior) graphical, processing, and multitouch capabilities of the current crop of Android and iOS devices?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Any reasons people would pick an Iphone over the current crop of Android devices or Blackberries?
Any reasons people would pick an Android device over the current crop of Iphones or Blackberries?
(You forgot Symbian btw - the number one platform, and as of Q2 2010 still increasing their lead over Blackberry and Apple, with their increase in sales second only to Android.)
And on a related note, I'm pleased that we manage to get coverage of the Blackberry without an obligatory astroturfing comparison to "the Iphone" as if it were number one, neither in the article nor the summary. Unfortunately the BBC are on their usual Apple spinning form, with the headline "RIM launches Blackberry Torch to challenge iPhone". (Does any other kind of product get a reference to a less successful competitor when it's covered in the news? And why pick Apple rather than Android (who are growing faster) or Nokia (who are number one)?)
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).
As a solutions provider, I experience a definite distinction between "business users" and "home users" as different markets have different requirements and expectations of their smart 'phone.' Consider an enthusiast 16 year old kid who thinks he knows it all and enjoys wasting time hacking around with his android and doesn't care that it may occasionally bug up whereas a corporate user or small business owner wants his emails and he wants them now, with a reliable experience that never fails. The latter market typically cares less about playing music, watching shows or taking pictures of lolfriends.
You're missing my point. I don't feel that I'm missing out on anything. As far as I'm concerned my existing BB is "something decent" and I feel little compulsion to line up around the block at some store downtown in order to replace it with another device.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ive got an old curve 8330 and consider it a decent phone. itll do most everything a modern touch screen phone will do, its just a little slower and not as pretty about it. id like a modern smartphone because im a nerd who likes tech stuff like that, not because i need it.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
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.
My iPhone often rings the new email alert a second or two before Outlook does.
Personal user: I want a camera, chat, MP3 player, Twitter, facebook, etc.
Business user: The corporate security and audit teams says all of that stuff has to be turned off.
I used to work at a company that required that even the phone feature be disabled on all blackberries connected to the corporate Exchange servers...
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
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.
I agree it's a shame physical keyboards aren't more common. I love my 5800, but I would have liked something with an actual keyboard as well as touch (there weren't any that I could see on PAYG in the price range I was looking).
The interesting thing is, I've seen a few dirt cheap feature phones with slide out QWERTY keyboards - e.g., the LG 360 for a measly £40 - so it doesn't seem to be something that should massively increase the costs.
I was about to say the same as far as iPhone email, and I'm loving the multiple Exchange account ability. Just wish it was more obvious that you need to setup your gmail account via the Exchange settings if you want push gmail.
No, BB simply has a much more efficient push email system than ActiveSync, or polling every 15 minutes.
...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...
> Also, why is it that businesses cannot benefit from the (considerably superior) graphical, processing, and multitouch capabilities of the current crop of Android and iOS devices?
Cost.
When you look at all the high-end phones being sold you sometimes get the idea that cost doesn't matter anymore. And for many consumers that is true, but businesses are less likely to want to pay for expensive capabilities that aren't needed.
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
heya,
Blackberry devices aren't that much cheaper.
For example, in my work here in Australia, I was told that our BB 9700 handsets were around $740, even after all the carrier discounts from Telstra (we're a very-large IB).
For that sort of money, you can nearly get a iPhone 4, or a Android phone.
For my personal phone, I have a Nexus One, and apart from the lack of a tactile keyboard, it's much nicer to the BB 9700 handset I use. The only drawback is the battery life, which is obviously lower, due to the large screen size. Still, for an office warrior, it's a small price to pay.
Also, RIM has a history of using annoying tricks to try and get you locked into their infrastructure. And simple things, which would normally work fine over say, Wifi, or a normal mobile plan are specifically locked out, simply to try to drive more sales of their other services. Even things like Gmail, Google Maps, MSN, Skype etc. are prevented from using Wifi (the phone has in-built Wifi), simple to drive more BIS/BES sales.
http://www.blackberryforums.com/wifi-hotzone/100809-will-google-maps-work-over-wifi.html
I think their devices are nifty, but their OS is still in the dark ages (6.0 doesn't look to change that), and they're not happy with just selling you very expensive smart-phones, they lock them down to force you to cough up more for "special" services (oftentimes just data through their circuits).
Cheers,
Victor
Uh, this phone sports a new OS :/
Internals are a bit disappointing. Why are they only putting a 624Mhz processor in their new flagship device? HTC, Apple, Moto & Samsung are all using 1ghz ARM variants in their flagship phones--with higher speeds and dual core phones on the near horizon.
Get this... if you don`t spend all your processing time making animated zooming window borders and other GUI frills, you don`t NEED an insane processor. What does a cell phone need to do?
Make calls... doesn`t need much processing power.
Look up contacts. Make appointments. Access memos... doesn`t need much processing power.
Take pictures. Display low-res video. Encode and decode music... doesn`t need much processing power.
If your phone seems slow, it`s because it`s full of glitzy crap. My Bold 9700 does everything I ask it to do, immediately. It doesn`t lag. It isn`t slow. It doesn`t - in a nutshell - need a faster processor.
"Oh no... he found the
Business user: I need fast push access to e-mail and critical documents wherever I go. I don't care about anything else.
Seriously, you can read critical non-text-format documents conveniently on a Blackberry? Far too much of my material comes in as PDF and it's acceptable on an iPhone with its excellent PDF reader. I'm sure modern Android devices do something similar, and have some larger screens (EVO and Droid X). My sister has a Blackberry and the UI, scrolling, and screen resolution are all miserable. I assume that it can probably handle a PDF in some way, I just don't know that I'd be able to live with it if my business depended on it.
On the flip side, the new Blackberry devices are fairly small, and if you compare prices, why get a Blackberry at this point? E-mail is handled well by most of the new smartphones out there, giving the edge to Blackberry ONLY when it comes to the corporate stuff(exchange servers and such). Give it another few years and Blackberry won't have ANY advantage when it comes to e-mail, so what will RIM do then?
RIM is really following in the footsteps of Palm.
Palm had a huge advantage, but sticking with an ancient OS made their devices seem slow and clunky.
Palm comes up with a new device with a new OS, but with a relatively small screen. The difference between what Blackberry and Palm have done is that WebOS is a VERY good OS compared to the new OS from Blackberry, which isn't nearly as good as what Palm came up with.
So, here's the question looking forward: Will HP/Palm release a higher end device with a larger screen before RIM does?
When you can get a Palm Pre Plus with two year contract for $50, what makes that so bad when RIM charges more and does less(even fewer apps than WebOS has)? Keep in mind that the Palm Pre and Pre Plus can be overclocked to 1GHz easily, so lag is a non-issue there as well.
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
Well, considering that many will receive this phone from their company, they probably won't use those features since they'll be blocked by policy (damn near impossible to circumvent...and not worth losing a job over anyway). I think they still make business users a priority (whatever they do, they don't mess with email and such), while trying to appease the general crowd at the same time (think of it like Windows use in the home; hard to reason why so many people use it, until one realizes that many people have to use it all day at work).
I had the Bold 9700 for a few weeks and was just as unimpressed as I was when RIM released the 8800. The keyboard felt compressed and the trackball was a bit annoying. I really like the clickwheel and feel that even to this day, the OS was designed around it. Blackberry devices are great for business functions, but doing anything else is better on an Android device or on the iPhone.
None, apart from the fact that it is better at doing phone calls, text messages, emails and shit like that.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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
It's also flipping all your damned apostrophes around!!!
My Pearl 8220 needs a faster processor. I can type faster than this damn thing can display the characters; which is highly frustrating when you try to use they sym key to insert punctuation and the damn symbol palette pops up three fucking characters later.
Apparently SureType needs more processing power.
grep -iw skynet
As it happens, that was a weird language/location/regional mode that arbitrarily flipped on my workstation for no obvious reason. It wasn't anything to do with my Blackberry.
"Oh no... he found the