Blackberry fans will be pleased to hear that the long awaited Blackberry Torch 9860 is due to launch very shortly and is expected for release in September 2011.
When most people think of Blackberry, they immediately think of QWERTY keyboards, businessmen and meetings but Blackberry’s maker, RIM has been hard at work in an effort to update their image and appeal to a much wider audience.
We were offered a sneak preview of this nifty device and have shared our thoughts and first impressions on the device to give you the information needed to help you decide whether to buy Blackberry Torch 9860.
Blackberry 9860 Key features
RIM has really pulled out all of the stops with the Blackberry Torch 9860 and has introduced some fantastic features to their new device. Some of the key features that you can expect to see from the Blackberry 9860 are:
• 3.7 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen
• 11.5mm thin - Blackberry’s thinnest smartphone to date
• 1.2GHz processor
• 720p video recording
• 5MP camera 2592х1944 px autofocus
• 4GB internal storage, 768MB RAM
• Micro SD up to 32GB
• Blackberry OS 7
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
• GPS with A-GPS support
• BlackBerry Maps
• Digital compass
• Near Field Communication support (NFC)
• Music play - Up to 44h
• Stand-by - up to 330h (2G) / Up to 320h (3G)
• Talk time - Up to 4h 40min (2G) / Up to 6h 50min (3G)
Blackberry Torch 9860 Look and feel
The Blackberry Torch 9860’s shell has had a complete overhaul, looking more like a slender Android handset rather than a traditional Blackberry, which we love. The phone feels slim and light to hold thanks to its 11.5mm thin shell.
The Blackberry 9860 has a full responsive touchscreen, but despite this RIM has decided to keep a few buttons at the bottom of the device including the Blackberry button, an optical trackpad, call answer and end buttons and a back button. It does make us wonder whether an optical trackpad is needed with such a huge touchscreen.
Blackberry 9860 Touchscreen
The capacitive touchscreen is very sensitive to touch, responding well to pinch and zoom with great rendering speeds. The on-screen touch QWERTY keyboard was quick and easy to use, with the option of typing in landscape mode for a more roomy experience.
Blackberry Torch 9860 Web browser
The Blackberry 9860 comes with a new web browser which is much faster and easier to use, it was actually one of the fastest smartphone browsers we’ve tested, with sites loading in less than a second.
The 1.2GHz processor makes the phone feel very fast to use with smoother transitions and faster page loading speeds than Blackberry predecessors. The browser also has full HTML5 support bringing a much better gaming experience to the Blackberry Torch 9860.
Blackberry Torch 9860 OS 7
The Blackberry 9860 runs Blackberry’s new operating system, the OS 7. This is a much slicker operating system and makes organising and navigating very easy.
The Blackberry Torch 9860 comes with BBM6 – the latest version of Blackberry Messenger. BBM is very popular with teenagers because it allows you to message other Blackberry users for free. BBM6 lets you integrate with other apps so that you can continue to message your friends whilst using other apps at the same time which is pretty cool.
The OS 7 also has Liquid Graphics technology which helps the graphics interface, processor and CPU work together, giving faster responses to touch. Do bear in mind though that Blackberry’s OS 7 does not support Flash although this is not really a big issue anymore.
Blackberry Touch 9860 Camera
When snapping photos you can either use the physical camera button or the onscreen touch button and the Blackberry 9860 also comes with a great selection of effects and photo filters which gave us hours of fun!
Buy Blackberry 9860 – Our overall summary
From the short amount of time we had to test the Blackberry Torch 9860, we can honestly say that RIM has done a great job. All of the new features and improvements work great together, delivering a much faster and slicker looking phone and we expect the Blackberry 9860 will now appeal to a much wider audience.
We don’t believe the Blackberry Torch 9860 will overtake Android devices or the iPhone 5 but it could certainly give them a run for their money. It may even be able to tempt some of the laggers away from all of the iPhone 5 hype. Blackberry and BBM fans will not be left disappointed and we for one are looking forward to the release in September.
We hope you have enjoyed our Blackberry Torch 9860 review. Let us know if you are planning to buy Blackberry 9860, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
