Review of the BlackBerry Torch 9800

Tomorrow, August 12, you’ll be able to walk into an AT&T store and purchase the newest BlackBerry device, the Torch 9800. But before you decide which device you’ll use for the next two years, we should take some time to discuss the ins and outs of the device. There is plenty to cover regarding the hardware, and then we’ll move onto the software aspect.

The hardware

The idea behind the Torch is that it’s the ultimate BlackBerry device. It combines the touchscreen of the Storm with the QWERTY keyboard that made the BlackBerry so famous. We’ve seen plenty of Torch pictures, but here are the open and closed ones just for good measure. You can click each one for a larger view:

And the back: I’m always a fan of comparison shots, so here’s the Torch along side the Google Nexus One and the BlackBerry Tour. And thickness: The Torch has plenty of quirks in the hardware, some of them positive and some of them not so positive. I wouldn’t call anything a negative, really — I even expressed some skepticism about the layout of the physical keyboard when I saw the device last Tuesday, but after playing with it for a while I have no further issues. Still, it’s best to dig into the nuances. Slide mechanism: Sliding the device open is easy enough. The screen is normally locked when I flip it open, so I just stick my thumb right on there and move it upward. When the screen is lit I fumble a bit, since it’s tough to slide it up from the bottom on account of the buttons being there. Still, it’s pretty standard. Screen responsiveness: The screen is as responsive as any touchscreen you’ll find out there. I had no problems performing any functions, and even found a reasonable degree of precision when scrolling. In the browser the device lags a bit when I do a big swipe to move way up or down the page, but it still moves appropriately. Convenience key: The Torch features just one convenience key, which is on the right-hand side of the device. You have to press pretty firmly in order to activate it. This is actually nice, as it prevents accidental depression. Locking and unlocking: Like most new BlackBerry devices the Torch features a dedicated lock button on top of the device. Sliding the device open will unlock it (as will hitting the lock button, of course). Trackpad: I didn’t think I’d like this so much, but I absolutely love having the ability to browse with a finger swipe or the trackpad. I’ve actually found myself using the trackpad to navigate menus, rather than swiping. Screen function: When I use my Nexus One I often complain that the device doesn’t adjust between landscape and portrait mode quickly enough, often sticking in one mode long after I’ve rotated the device. This is not the case at all with the Torch. It responds almost immediately. It even goes into landscape mode on the home screen, as you can see here: Keyboard: I’m not sure what changed between last Tuesday and today, but I’ve have a much better time with the keyboard this time. My complaint before was that the top row of keys was too close to the top slider piece, but that might have been a result of me rushing through the device demo last week. I’m using the physical keyboard almost exclusively. Charging port: Nothing to add on the port itself, but just a lesson learned. If you plan to type while the device is charging, I suggest using the virtual keyboard in landscape mode. Otherwise the plug gets in the way.

The software

Now that we’ve established the quality of the hardware, it’s time to move onto the software. For so long the operating system has been one point on which RIM has been constantly criticized. As we moved from OS 4.2 to OS 4.5 and even into 5.0 we didn’t see any wholesale changes. Instead we got incremental upgrades, and 5.0 hardly seemed worthy of its own version. With OS 6, RIM looked to change that reputation. Boot time When I first turned on the Torch I was surprised at how fast it booted up. Maybe I’m just used to the Tour and its near-10-minute boot time. But even with the intro video the Torch got to the good part in maybe three minutes. This also came in handy when I froze the device while trying to take a screenshot during a video. I don’t plan to try that again. Home screen In previous BlackBerry OS builds, there were two main places you could view applications, the home screen and applications menu. The applications menu was straight forward, as it was just a grid of all your apps. The home screen was variable, depending on theme. Sometimes you’d have a ton of apps there, sometimes you’d have a preview of your messages and calendar, or sometimes you’d have both. With BlackBerry 6 we get a much more simplified interface. When you first see the home screen you’ll see four icons at the bottom of the screen, along with a bar above them. We’ll get to the bar in a second. The neatest part about this new home screen is that you’re not really limited to those four icons. Not hardly. The interface allows you to manipulate the home screen as you see fit. Want four rows of icons? Drag the bar all the way to the top. Want three? Two? One? You can do that and keep it that way. Check it:     The bar on top also allows you to keep more of your stuff on the same screen. The main screen has all of your items, including folders. Swipe to the right and you get favorites, then media, followed by downloads, and then finally frequently used items. The menu is circular, so you can swipe either left or right to find the menu you seek.     Moving upward, there is a status bar on which you’ll see plenty of notification icons. This is rather awesome, because it makes moot the idea of a Today preview. Just click on this and a menu will drop down. It contains all of your new notifications, from messages to social apps. This includes Social Feeds, something we’ll touch on a bit later. Scroll through these and you can pick which messages to view. You can also click on the header and open that application. As a substitute for Today, I don’t think RIM could have done better. Also on that bar sit two static icons, one for search — which searches everything on your device and can also search the web — and profiles. Those are two excellent icons to have readily available on the home screen. Up above is the clock, signal meter, battery meter, and other network indicators. Click it and your Manage Connections app will open. I wish you could open the clock by clicking that, but the whole top bar is one big button. The browser The biggest change people sought was with the browser. Again, instead of a new, refreshed browser in the newer operating systems we got incremental upgrades. They were welcome — the browser on OS 4.2 was particularly horrible. But we still didn’t have that robust web browsing interface you see on other platforms. Thankfully, the WebKit browser changes all of that. As you can see, the browser renders web pages in full if there is no automatic mobile redirect. This view obviously does you little good beyond reading headlines. But the browser has an excellent zoom function that not only makes the text bigger, but also renders it quickly. In OS 4.5 through 5.0 you would also see non-mobile pages rendered in full and could zoom. The difference is that, in my experience, the rendering took way too long. OS 6 does a much nicer job of zooming and rendering quickly. If the site has a dedicated mobile version you’ll go there, and I don’t see a good way to see the actual site. Tabbed browsing is a new and welcome addition. Next to the address bar you’ll see a pair of overlapping squares. Click that and you’ll see all of your active tabs. You can hit the green plus sign to add a new tab, or you can just swipe between your currently open ones. The red X closes the tab you have highlighted, not the tab that is currently open in the browser. Also, it does not close the tabs screen. I made that mistake once. The Escape key will get you back to the main browser screen. The icon next to tabs, the globe icon, lets you manipulate browser functions. You can add the current page to bookmarks, add the page to your home screen, send the page address to a contact, or copy the address. This is also where you can access your bookmarks and browsing history. Not that you need me to explain that. It’s pretty self-explanatory once you start using the device. Watching videos is pretty nice, too. The videos don’t load right in the browser, though it’s not like the older browser where it would open in your Media app. It’s like clicking on a video automatically turns on full screen mode. You can watch the video there, and click the Escape button to return to page from which you launched the video. At the press conference last Tuesday RIM showed off one feature of the browser that I thought would make a big difference. When zooming, if you double click the screen it would not only make the text larger, but it would align it as to fit on one screen. That feature, at least initially, appears to be a bit wonky. Check out the screen shots below.

Some sites seem to wrap the titles but not the text. But others, particularly awesome ones I guess, wrap just fine. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to this. It’s just something I’ve encountered. I’m sure this is something that will end up working better with future software updates. But for now it doesn’t exactly serve its purpose. Which is a shame. It’s an awesome feature in concept. Social Feeds More and more we’re taking care of our social networking on mobile devices. I know plenty of people who don’t even use Twitter on their desktops anymore, even if they’re right at the computer. I don’t think I’d ever go that far, but I do have to say that using social networking and media apps on my mobile devices has been a more pleasant experience than using it on the desktop. It just feels like they belong there. (Though I’m sure many will disagree, since it’s a personal feeling.) With the Social Feeds app you can keep up with your friends and family with ease. Like the integrated messages app, the default screen in Social Feeds shows you the latest from all of the networks you have active. You can filter these by clicking on the top bar and selecting the specific feed you’d like to view. A click of the Escape key will bring you back to the big feed. Swipe to the right and you’ll see your RSS feeds. There are a few subscriptions by default, but you can easily unsubscribe to those. To subscribe to a new feed just click menu and select New Feed. Type in the address — you can use the web address and not the feed address — and you’ll get the subscription confirmation. You can also filter these by single feed. You can also post new messages right from the social networks app for any application you have integrated. Click menu and select New Post. This will bring up a text box and a list of social applications which you’ve signed into. Type the messages, check all the apps you want to send it to, and your status will be updated. You can also share RSS items with your networks. After you click into the specific post, click Forward, and you’ll see the New Post screen, only with a description of and link to the post. Check the appropriate boxes and away you’ll send it. Universal search One feature I’m liking is the ability to search anything on the device from one place. Universal Search means you can search files and folders on your device with one search. You can also search various web apps, including Yellow Pages, Google, App World, and You Tube, all from the same place. In other words, if you want to do a simple Google search you can just type it into Universal Search and you can do that, or you can search the same thing on You Tube, etc. By default, all you have to do is start typing to launch universal search. It’s like typing a search into Firefox. Just start and you’ll get the search option. You can also opt to employ application shortcuts, as in the old OS home screens, but I think Universal Search provides a bit more value.

Overall thoughts

When I first heard of the BlackBerry slider I was skeptical of its potential. In general I prefer either the old style BlackBerry, were the face is split between the keyboard and the screen, or a full touchscreen device. Slider/touchscreen devices always struck me as bulky and unnecessary. The BlackBerry Torch has changed my tune. I find this device, along with the new OS, far more intuitive than previous BlackBerry models. The change from SurePress to a more traditional touchscreen helps a lot, but so does the new operating system. I actually wonder how it will translate to a non-touch device, because it feels like it was made for the touchscreen. Everything on the device is easily accessible, and if you have problems finding anything you can easily track it down using universal search. The addition of Social Feeds is probably my favorite new feature, since it takes care of so much in one place. The drop-down universal messages menu also adds a lot to the OS, since it basically takes all of your new messages and puts them in one easy to reach place. Since messaging is the first and foremost priority of the BlackBerry platform, I’d say that this was a successful implementation. If I were in the position to select a device for the next two years and didn’t mind going with AT&T’s service, I can’t do anything but recommend the BlackBerry Torch. It brings wholesale changes to the BlackBerry platform while retaining its best features.

What’s next?

I touched on tons of features in this review, but I obviously did not hit on everything. There will surely be questions, not only about what I reviewed but about things that I did not hit. Leave your questions in the comments, and I’ll try to compile them into a follow-up review for next week.