When Research In Motion (RIM) launched its first touchscreen phone, Storm, it was not appreciated much by BlackBerry fans. Storm didn’t feel like a BlackBerry phone due to its touchscreen. That LED RIM’s developers to combine QWERTY keypads (a domain that RIM pioneered in,) and a touchscreen in the BlackBerry Torch.
In that sense, BlackBerry Torch is a hybrid smartphone — with a host of desirable features.
Torch has a 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen that supports multi touch gestures, which means the screen understands that pinch in means zoom in and pinch out means zoom out, just like in the iPhone. The screen has a Resolution of 360 x 480 pixels and displays 16 million colors. Torch has a full Qwerty keypad and a touchscreen for inputs.
The new BlackBerry operating system has a better interface that its predecessor did. The interface is smooth, has larger icons and bigger menus for a less frustrating touchscreen experience. Social networking apps are built into the operating system and are an integral part of it. Users get updates from various social networking sites along with alerts from the BlackBerry service on the home screen itself.
Torch uses Wifi and Bluetooth v2.1+ for wireless connectivity. With its 1300 mAh battery fully charged, the phone supports up to five hours of talk time.
BlackBerry Torch, however, does miss on a few points. First, it uses an age old MHz processor in the era of GHz processors. Secondly, it has only a single memory slot which means a user has to sacrifice the 4 GB Memory card which comes bundled with the handset if he wants to use a 8, 16 or 32 GB micro SD card instead.
Ultimately, though, BlackBerry Torch is a fine and impressive cell phone to use.