BlackBerry Torch 9800 Sim Free Smartphone

Being a text-happy gadget loving student, after a few weeks of research deciding between the iphone 4, htc desire z, htc desire hd and the blackberry torch, I'm confident I made the right decision.

BATTERY LIFE

The odds of finding a phone with a responsive touch screen and a half decent battery life that didn't require charging every day, were slim up to this point. This is why the torch intrigued me, coming from a sony x10 in which I was lucky to last 8 hours before grabbing the incredibly un-portable, portable charger. Battery life presents itself as a massive selling point to me, with the torch the touchscreen is crazily responsive and I don't have to panic if I miss a charge for one or two days. Granted you have to learn how to close you're applications properly or they continue to run in the background, and also drain your battery in the background. As long as you press the option key and select close, rather than press the big red button (DON'T DO IT!) you're battery will remain safe and will last a good 40 hours with heavy use.

TOUCH SCREEN AND RESOLUTION

Now the one thing blackberrys aren't famous for is their screen resolution, being that the torch kept the same resolution as it's other latest blackberrys (480x360) yet made it's screen bigger was not the best of ideas from RIM, needless to say it's not a horrible resolution, 8 out of 10 times you'll get the response you want when you use the touch screen however a lower resolution will of course effect the touch screen, not a massive problem at all, however I would be lying if i said it was never an inconvenience. As for the responsiveness of the touch screen it is no different than an htc or an iphone and thank god it doesn't click in like the storm. From time to time the responsiveness is a little late, but that's the processors fault, so moving swiftly on.

PROCESSOR AND MEMORY MANAGEMENT

The torch may only have a 624mhz processor compared to most new and advanced smartphones which are packing 1ghz processors, rim have used memory management as a key to their success, the torch running os 6 helps the torch use its processor to maximum efficiency. You will find with correct use that the torch functions just as quickly as as an iphone or htc desire, providing you close applications properly like I previously mention. You can check to see if you've left programs open by holding the options key at the home screen, and you just select and properly close the applications you don't want running and hey presto, smoother running processor.

APP WORLD

Blackberry app world was introduced along with OS6, there's thousands of apps to choose from and plenty of free apps. App world is still a work in progress, it hasn't been around for as long as the ios app store or android market place, so there are obviously fewer apps at this moment in time. However there are still tons of apps that focus on primary needs, especially the pre installed trial version of word to go which is essentially all components of microsoft office that allow you to download an open powerpoints, word documents, spreadsheets and pdfs and so on. The full app costs about £10 and is well worth it.

Camera

The torch is one of the first blackberrys to be blessed with a decent 5MP camera, compared to the old 3.2MP camera on other blackberrys this is a huge improvement. Sure it's not HD like the new htc desire z and hd or the iphone 4, but it doesn't have to be, it's sharp and captures clear memories with an led flash.

QWERTY KEYBOARD

Now a great attraction about the torch is a responsive smartphone with a keyboard, the keyboard isn't exactly like the old bold and curves but is still pretty similar, it takes some time to get used to but only a couple of weeks and once you are used to it you'll never look back. One thing I can't stress enough is that there is no wrong way to use the torch, if the slider is down you can get an on screen qwerty, in portrait or landscape screen mode. This is really helpful for when you only have one hand free (for whatever reason) because when the slider is up it gets pretty tall and requires the attention of both hands.

E-MAIL

Blackberrys, what a reputation they have as business phones, i've already configured all three of my emails on my torch, and can customize the alerts for each one, view single or combined address inboxes and download and view pretty much any kind of attatchment. The e-mail sending is fast and able to do in the background thanks to os 6's multi tasking. Writing them is quick thanks to the qwerty keyboard and you can also attatch your own files.

PC SYNC

The torch connects with your computer thanks to blackberry desktop software and if you want you can sync all of your files with it, music, pictures, documents and so on. However that is come to be expected with all desktop software, but the one thing that seriously caught my eye in blackberrys software was the option to tether. For those of you who aren't sure what tethering is it is essentially using the mobile internet included in your contract or pay as you go sim but on your computer (isn't technology wonderful?) Once you have your blackberry connected to your lap top or desktop you can choose to access the internet through your phone at no extra cost than it would using it on your blackberry, just make sure you don't go over your contract.

STORAGE

The torch come with a 4gb micro sd card, and because of that has expandable storage up to 32gb, but i've found 4gb to be plenty of memory even with music and apps.

WEB BROWSING

What review would be complete without mentioning the fastest growing media in the world?

The torch's web browsing comes with flash, what a dream come true, the speed is simply brilliant for a smart phone and it displays web pages just like your computer would. It is a huge improvement over other blackberrys.

NAVIGATION

OS 6'S navigation is just as easy with the optical trackpad as it is with the touchscreen, use of how you navigate really depends on how you're holding your phone, when I have the slider up I tend to use the optical trackpad to navigate as the screen requires a pretty long reach if your holding it at the bottom to use the keyboard, when the slider is down I make good use of the touchscreen but it's easy either way and you'll end up just using whatever works for you.

PRICE

For the price amazon is giving you'll be getting a fair deal on a brilliant smartphone, it however would be wrong of me not to mention blackberry services, which includes of the web browser, app world and bbm would cost an extra £5 a month, now you can add this to your existing contract without cancelling it like I did, or you sign up for it on pay as you go. However this is a small price to pay to make use of your flash new smartphone.

This is my first review and I hope it has been helpful.

I don't consider myself to be a 'fanboy', albeit I have previously owned a Blackberry Pearl and an 8900. My last phone was a HTC Desire, which was very pretty, good at everything multimedia, web browsing was superb with Flash support, etc.

My problem with the Desire was that it simply didn't "Work" like Blackberrys, what I mean is that when I turn on my Blackberry it will synchronise with my POP email account, Facebook, and SMS, and then will immediately notify me whenever I get a new message, until I turn the phone off again. The Desire doesn't do this, it instead will go and check for updates at a defined interval, which in my opinion isn't very efficient. The benefit is that Blackberrys use push notifications, meaning that your phone gets told when there is an update.

The Torch is RIMs attempt at competing with the iPhone and influx of Android phones. At the end of the day the technical specification of the Torch is not comparable to the iPhone or average Android, the screen is a lower resolution, the camera isn't as good, the processor is slower, and there isn't as much memory; but, none of that really matters, because the hardware differences are essentially superficial, what matters is that the phone does what you want it to do, the fact is that it is good at being a communications device...

When you turn your phone on for the first time the set up wizard asks you a couple of questions and within a minute or two emails start to arrive in your mailbox. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube are all there ready for you to use. A quick search in App World gets you eBay, and a quick web search will get you Google Mobile (Maps, Sync, GMail, and more). I use Google to store my contacts, Google Sync is great for storing and retrieving my list of names and numbers. Soon RIM are going to release 'Blackberry Protect' which will fulfil this same function, you will be able to back up your device remotely and find where it is via the Blackberry Protect website (I have beta tested this app on the 8900, and it is amazing).

The touch screen is responsive, and looks very nice indeed (that fact that it has less pixels than other popular phones doesn't really matter - my eyesight simply isn't good enough to make out the individual pixels), the on-screen keyboard works well, the hardware keyboard is perfect. The touch pad takes some getting used to, I ended up making mine less sensitive in the settings.

Wifi N works well, making FREE calls across the UMA network is always a nice feature to have, if you end up anywhere without signal but do have Wifi access you can still call and text without any problem.

OS6 is nice, it doesn't try be pretentious and pretty like Android does, a simple clearly laid out home screen which is uncluttered, swipe left or right to scroll through the new category views, context sensitive menus based on whatever you click, and a wonderful help option for everything. There are a few bugs that I expect RIM to be fixing very soon; The YouTube up-loader always fails, for instance.

The media player is as good as any iPod interface, and sound through headphones is good. I'm not entirely sure about video, I'm using the same micro sd as I had in my HTC, and videos shot on the HTC won't play even though they have the same file extension as those filmed on the Blackberry (The HTC does play Blackberry videos though?!?). Wireless music sync takes a bit of setting up - install the latest desktop software and the appropriate app on the phone, whilst you computer is on your phone will list you media, select teh albums you want on your phone and they'll download for you to listen to later on.

Pictures are organised well, can be sorted into folders, the camera is 5 mega pixels and isn't great in low light - daylight shots are great. The inbuilt file manager allows for all sorts of things to be done.

The device lacks any good games, a simple brick breaker game, and Wordmole (word search style game). I would have though a card game could have been included.

Blackberry Messenger is brilliant, you can message any Blackberry owner for free, share pictures, videos, sounds, calender, task lists, all with ease. Blackberry messenger can also be used to send text messages to non Blackberry contacts. The email client works well, in fact most of the email functionality is in line with any PC email client, although it does lack Junk mail filtering (Which is a shame).

The web browser isn't perfect, it lacks Flash support and is a bit sluggish, I suspect that RIM will be working on these issues.

My favourite bit about the Blackberry is the settings, there simply are so many things you can tweak, for instance you can change the default currency icon, lock screen message, theme, wallpaper and ringtone, all with a few clicks around the well organised and endless list of options.

The keyboard seems to work perfectly, when typing with my thumbs each key seems independent, and provides good positive feedback when typing.
The slider seems sound, no rattles when giving it a good shake. Phone itself is heavier than you expect it to be, feels very sturdy. The rubberised back makes holding it comfortable. Two gripes. The battery cover is a bit awkward to get off. The conveinience key has to be pressed firmly to get a response.

One more thing to add. Unlike other Blackberry models, this one doesn't come with a case, if you order this phone also get the case BlackBerry Torch Leather Pocket Case (Black)

To summarise:
If you are a Blackberry this device will do everything that you'd expect a Blackberry to do and will do it very well indeed.
If you have not owned a Blackberry, but want to own a phone that works well, securely, and makes sense when you use it, you will be happy with this phone.
If you want a phone which is great at playing video, and browsing the web, and don't care about well thought out messaging and email, then I think really you should buy something else, because this phone is not for you.

I love this phone, it does everything I want it to, my HTC simply didn't.

I upgraded to the BlackBerry 9800 Torch from a HTC Touch 2. Admittedly the HTC Touch 2 was a mistake and a sorry excuse for a phone running the Windows mobile operating system and I was driven to replacing it as soon as I could.

Like many, I was heading down the road of iPhone fandom, and just as I was about to make my decision. The BlackBerry 9800 appeared on the market. What held me back from purchasing the iPhone 4 at the time was its price and tariff range. The appearance of BlackBerry's latest model provided me with what I think is a valid alternative for consideration and, indeed, I duly acquired it.

I was taken with the fact that it was not just a touch phone and provided the option to use a physical QWERTY keyboard, or indeed the touchscreen. Not as glitzy or as slick as Apple's or Android offerings it nonetheless is a very competent communications device. You have read all the reviews about what it can do. My personal favourite is the fact that it will sync with your iTunes library putting the media player in my opinion on a par with the iPhone itself. Of course, the added bonus of being able to receive and respond to your e-mails on the go on a push basis, are a BlackBerry trade mark. Voice call quality is excellent battery life is also good. The phone is not complex, but it does have a myriad of setup options which allows the user to tailor the device to their personal needs.

This is not an iPhone killer, nor any other phone killer. Why does it need to be? It's just a well-made phone and I for one am glad I chose it. That is not to say that the iPhone is not good, (because it is a truly great phone), just that, despite its iconic looks and its plethora of apps. This BlackBerry at least provided me, a consumer, with a very good choice.