Blackberry Torch Hands-On

I just played with the Blackberry Torch, and here are my first impressions: physically, it builds on the design of the Bold 9700, so you will find similar features and the form factor is comparable, although a little thicker, due to the sliding keyboard. It is amazingly light. In fact, it is as light as the Bold 9700, and according to Blackberry, the battery life is as good as the 9700 (it was the best for a while). That sounds great, although we’ll have to test it for ourselves

The user interface is fairly intuitive andlooks better than Android’s in my opinion. It is also familiar, if you have handled a (recent) Blackberry. I was hoping that the user interface would be smoother, but it is not, or not enough. Right now, scrolling is slower than most Android phones, and there is still some work that needs to be done on that front. The setup looks a whole lot better, I’m glad to see the text-based setup interface go.

The web browser has improved quite a bit (thanks Webkit), but it didn’t feel so fast, despite all the recent record-shattering with web benchmarks. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about, but again, it’s impossible to tell for sure before we use it in real-world conditions. At the moment, I’d say that web page compatibility has improved significantly, but overall browsing speed remains to be proven.

All in all, this is good progress. Blackberry is capitalizing on Apple’s religious refusal to add a physical keyboard. The Torch does offer the best of both worlds in some ways: you can use it as a touch phone, and its physical keyboard resembles the Bold 9700’s – but is *not* identical, so it needs to be proven too. This phone will probably be an excellent upgrade for Blackberry hardcore users, I have little doubt about it.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Cellphones, Top Stories