Blackberry Torch

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is the flagship of BlackBerry's range, and features both a slide-out Qwerty keyboard and a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen.

Blackberry Torch 9800 - overall phone performance The BlackBerry Torch isn't that much bigger than its sibling, the BlackBerry Bold 9700, but manages to squeeze in both a touchscreen and the traditional BlackBerry keyboard. Both are easy to use, with the keyboard's layout and spacing as usable as any BlackBerry keyboard (although non-BlackBerry users may still find it cramped). There's also a responsive on-screen keyboard that appears when the phone is closed.

The 3.2-inch screen is bigger than the display on most BlackBerrys and it really helps. Web browsing is much easier, as is reading all your 'threaded' messages (whereby the phone shows both the message you've sent and any replies).

The touchscreen's resolution, however, is just 480x360 pixels. This is a little low compared with the high-resolution screens of its rivals, such as the iPhone 4, HTC Desire or Samsung Galaxy S.

The build quality is solid and the slider mechanism gives no cause for concern. The phone is also noticeably chunkier than others, but this is to be expected when the designers have got to cram in a keyboard as well as a touchscreen.

The Torch was unveiled at the same time as BlackBerry's latest version of its operating system, BlackBerry OS 6. This is the first handset to come with OS 6 pre-installed, though other handsets will receive it as an upgrade in time.

Key new features of OS 6 include a redesigned user interface with five homescreens and new icons that BlackBerry says are more intuitive, particularly for new BlackBerry users.

There are features that Android users will be familiar with, such as the sliding 'App drawer' that can be dragged from the bottom of the screen, and the notification and settings bar that drops down from the top of the screen.

There is a new 'Social Feeds' inbox which combines BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), email, SMS, Twitter and facebook into one inbox and keep you up-to-date with your contacts without needing to open multiple apps. And universal search is a superb new feature that searches all contacts, texts, emails and tweets within the handset. And enables you to search the net and App World simultaneously.

We were astounded by BlackBerry OS 6, and located it a noticable difference within the older os in this handset. Despite its array of advanced features, we still found Torch easy to use.

Quality of sound is rather good. Calls through the phone to the reference model were particularly clear, as well as whenever we introduced loud background noise, both calls made and received remained straightforward.

Life of the battery on calls is around average. In medium reception levels, we have nearly 4 hours of talk time from a full charge.Recharging took 137 minutes.

CameraRound the back on the handset there is a 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash and face detection. Image quality is affordable and also the 3.2-inch screen displays them practically. The digital camera can record videos at VGA resolution (640x480 pixels) - this really is OK but can't contend with other handsets that boast 720p HD video capture. Iphone The BlackBerry Torch 9800 comes with a impressive very good music player though it lacks an FM radio. Quality of sound is actually acceptable, although you ought to turn the actual right up to be able to listen to it, and it is simple to use. We love to that you could control the player via controls included in the headphone lead, however the button is pretty small. There is a 3.5mm socket so that you can connect your own personal headphones in the event you prefer those to the supplied set. The Torch incorporates 4GB of built-in memory aboard plus a 4GB memory so there's enough to conserve all of your favourite songs.

Internet The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is wi-fi and HSDPA (3.5G) enabled for fast web access. Therefore we learned that the mixture on the touchscreen, trackpad and slide-out keyboard allow it to become straightforward to navigate around web sites, especially that you can pinch-to-zoom. However, our tests also revealed that browsing online drains battery pretty quickly - we just got around 135 minutes of usage from a full charge. The revolutionary BlackBerry OS 6 comes with an improved internet browser that allows you to open multiple webpages on different tabs. You may also utilize the phone like a wireless modem on your laptop. You are able to download applications from BlackBerry's App World, even though this isn't as well stocked as Apple's App Store or even the Android Market, along with GPS aboard you will find location-based features, also.

The Torch includes a 624MHz processor. This lacks the potency of the 1GHz Snapdragon processors available on its rivals, although there is a fairly healthy 512MB of RAM so we didn't experience any lag when using the phone.

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