BlackBerry Torch 9800 - Getting it Right

The Flames of Succession

If anyone vaguely remembers the and , you might also remember how we felt about BlackBerry's first foray into the touch screen arena. Back then, with little experience in touch screen technology, the use of its SurePress feature on the Storm was a usability disaster. Moving a year ahead, the Storm 2 arrested the problems faced by the clicking problem of SurePress, but it just wasn't enough to combat how the BlackBerry OS wasn't optimized for touch screen user interfaces just yet.

Fortunately, Research in Motion (RIM) is no quitter. Its latest BlackBerry Torch 9800, announced in August 2010, is a testament to that. The Torch was a big leap for RIM, showing how it is much more prepared than its BlackBerry Storm and Storm 2 predecessors.



Before we had our hands on the Torch, the general impression was that it could be bulky and cumbersome to use with a weight of 161g. Being proven wrong upon testing the phone was definitely a blessing in disguise, since the Torch manages to distribute its weight quite evenly. To prove this point, the Torch didn't feel off-balance when we slid the display up, which typically makes a device slightly top-heavy. The one grouse we had was when we pushed the slider up, it was apparent that our thumb tends to slip and rub across the optical trackpad.

On the whole, the Torch is easy on the hands. The QWERTY keyboard isn't a burden on its profile, keeping it reasonable at 14.6mm in thickness. Its left profile is kept simple with just a lone microUSB port. This leaves most of its buttons on the right, including the 3.5mm audio port. Like most of its BlackBerry designs, the crown of the device is saved for the lock and silent buttons.

Traditional BlackBerry users would rely mostly on its optical trackpad to interact with the Torch. But for us, we find the touch screen to be a better option with its responsive and comfortable size. The 3.2-inch touch screen display, by itself, is competent enough for you to interact with the Torch. Right below that, are the usual physical buttons, such as the optical trackpad that's flanked by the call/end, menu and back buttons. What lies beneath the display when we slide it, is a physical QWERTY keyboard, much like the ones we see on the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Differences are apparent, and we noticed the keys are more flushed into the body than usual.

Nonetheless, what both camps can agree on is the usefulness of its physical QWERTY keyboard, the trademark of any BlackBerry device. While it is still relatively easy to type quickly and accurately on the keyboard, the top rows could be slightly restricted by the Torch's display. If that doesn't sit too well with you, there's still the on-screen keyboard to fall back on.

Moving into its Six

Navigating through the Torch's interface is easy for two reasons - the earlier mentioned touch responsiveness, and the new BlackBerry 6 OS, which makes its debut on the Torch. A few months back, we gave you . We shall give you a better idea of how the updated OS performs on the Torch.

There are a number of aesthetic changes in BlackBerry 6 OS, mostly in how the home page is refined. Instead of a main menu, the home screen now houses multiple pages, segregated according to its apps. You can access all your apps from the main page, but swiping your finger to the left or right reveals items such as recently downloaded or often accessed apps in separate pages. Furthermore, you can hide the menu to have a cleaner home screen.

Notifications have also been given a similar treatment in the form of a drop down menu. Incoming messages, emails and even notifications from Facebook or Twitter will be parked just below the status bar. Clicking on it will bring the menu down, which gives you a listing of the incoming notifications to choose from.

A third layer is present above the notification tab, which is also a drop down menu that displays your connectivity options, time, date and settings. As apparent, BlackBerry 6 OS is all about putting all the things you need in a single glance without jumping through hoops via multiple menus.

Web browsing on the Torch sees a vast improvement from its earlier iteration. With BlackBerry 6, you get a webkit browser that also includes pinch-to-zoom to home in onto specific areas within the web page. This is further enhanced with the use of tabs, which shows up as thumbnail previews when you trawl through pages.

Similar to what its competition is doing, RIM is making the move into the social network scene by pre-loading such apps onto their BlackBerry devices. On the Torch, you'll find an app dubbed as Social Feeds, which pulls news feeds from not just social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but also any RSS feeds that you subscribe. Think of Social Feeds as a news aggregator, which is really all you need to read news snippets off the web at one glance.

Finding that Right Balance

Finding a balance has been one of the utmost issues with mobile devices. While consumers are forever hoping for devices with faster processors and smoother performance, manufacturers have to tread carefully with the downside that comes with such power consuming features - battery life.

On paper, the Torch's 624MHz processor might not match up to the recent range of Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz smartphones. But this really boils down to how you view the choice of the modest processor speed. If the Torch provides a fluid and smooth experience during our daily use, and promises an above average battery life, who are we to refute its decision to utilize a mid-range processor for its flagship model? And that it did, with no obvious lag when we scrolled through its various features.

This was further exemplified by its video playback, which was aptly handled with smooth frame rates in our test video. Its 3.2-inch screen was also competent in video quality, which is enhanced by a revamped multimedia user interface. The Torch also passes off as a mean audio machine, which comes with various equalizer settings to adjust the audio playback to your whim and fancy.

And if you need to use the Torch for imaging purposes, its 5-megapixel camera did deliver clean images, though colors veered slightly towards a warmer hue. This is in line with how the earlier BlackBerry devices delivered on imaging quality, and for the Torch, upping the ante with a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash makes it a better all-rounder of a smartphone.

As mentioned earlier, striking a balance between performance and stamina is crucial to a product's development. Taking its 624MHz processor into consideration, we now look at how the Torch fares in its battery mileage with our test. This involves the looping of a video at 240 x 320 pixels resolution, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth actively connected. The video is played with the screen brightness and volume at 100%. To put things into perspective, the Torch is compared against the following devices which are similar in hardware – the HTC Legend and Motorola Dext.

To make sense of the results, here's what you need to compare for devices - the processing power, display size, resolution and battery capacity. Both the Torch and Legend come very close with its processors at about 600MHz, though the Legend is rated with a lower screen resolution on the same 3.2-inch screen size and has slightly lower processing speed. In view of that, it wasn't surprising to see how the Legend fared slightly better than the Torch in battery life. Next to the Dext, the Torch got much better results even with a larger display at a higher resolution, with a faster processor. Put all that into the cooking pot, and we are quite pleased with how the Torch sustains itself in its usage. The portability index however factors in the form factor and weight, and with the Legend being more compact and lightweight, the results aren't surprising. Still, the Torch isn't bad in this department but it's bettered by the Legend if portability is key.

How about the real world usage? Spending most of our time on its preloaded Social Feeds, we pulled news feeds from Twitter, Facebook and various other popular social networks. Adding in a mixture of calls, messages and web surfing, the Torch lasted up to a day and a half on a single charge. This amount of up-time has become a rare sight with smartphones of today as they give way in less than a day from its power-draining huge screens and fast processors.

Getting it Right

The road to touch screen perfection has been a long one for RIM. With two lackluster products such as the Storm and Storm2 in its lineup, it was a grim moment for its touch screen offerings. Learning some lessons from its earlier mishaps, the BlackBerry Torch is definitely a turning point. The addition of a physical QWERTY keyboard, the one aspect that made BlackBerrry devices famous, gives the best of both worlds to the consumers.

However, what did make us a believer in the Torch is the one thing that wasn't done right with its predecessors - its touch screen. Working in tandem with the new BlackBerry 6 OS, the user experience on the Torch is much more intuitive, involving a less steep learning curve for both the faithful and first-time BlackBerry user. The various improvements, ranging from a well-categorized menu for your apps, to quick drop down menus for notifications and settings, are just some of the icing on the cake with the Torch. The introduction of a webkit browser with pinch-to-zoom and tabbed pages, and nifty preloaded apps such as Social Feeds, have also given the Torch more reasons to stay on top of the game.

Yet, it's undeniable that there is still much work cut out for RIM if they wish to keep up with the competition in the apps scene, trailing far behind the bigger players such as Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. Similarly, we aren't saying the Torch is perfect in every aspect. On the physical form factor, there are days when we had trouble with the QWERTY keyboard, especially with the top row being restricted by the display just above it. Moreover, the optical trackpad becomes a likely target for your thumb (without intending to) when you attempt to slide the display to reveal the keyboard.

Its multimedia performance proved to be an apt all-rounder, with the right amount of attention given to its video, audio and imaging quality. Compared to devices within its hardware class, the Torch is seemingly above average in stamina with our intensive multimedia test which managed nearly 6 hours. Given its humble specifications, ranging from a smaller screen to a modest processor speed, we think this is the norm, which doesn't exactly give the Torch much of a breakthrough. However when we put the Torch through our more real-world usage scenario, it actually has a much more reasonable up-time of nearly one and a half days.

Unlike the earlier Storm and Storm2, we can now safely say RIM got the formula right with the new Torch. As a mobile device for both work and personal pursuits, the Torch's S$999 price tag is reasonably acceptable for a BlackBerry device, considering its mileage, smooth performance and a much more intuitive user interface.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.