The BlackBerry Torch 9860 is a 3.7-inch touchscreen smartphone, sweeping aside the Storm name to give RIM another crack at a keyboardless device. It arrives with BlackBerry OS7, the same as the BlackBerry Bold 9900 which we reviewed recently, but offering a large screen BlackBerry experience.
Impressive Design
BlackBerry devices have been consistent in their design over the past few generations. One glance and you know the Torch 9860 is a BlackBerry. The framing of the two halves of the device with the silver band reflects a design highlight BlackBerry have been using for a couple of years. The soft curve at the top of the phone means you don't get a hard edge against your ear when you make a call.
By contrast, there is a sharp, hard, edge at the back of the phone and given the location of the lock/unlock on the top of the device, it's almost impossible to unlock the display comfortably using one hand. It's a small point and one of the first things we noticed.
Impressive Design
BlackBerry devices have been consistent in their design over the past few generations. One glance and you know the Torch 9860 is a BlackBerry. The framing of the two halves of the device with the silver band reflects a design highlight BlackBerry have been using for a couple of years. The soft curve at the top of the phone means you don't get a hard edge against your ear when you make a call.
By contrast, there is a sharp, hard, edge at the back of the phone and given the location of the lock/unlock on the top of the device, it's almost impossible to unlock the display comfortably using one hand. It's a small point and one of the first things we noticed.
The delicate contouring of the body of the phone around the 3.5mm headphone jack and the Micro-USB look great. It's nice to see attention to detail, especially design detail, but it does makes the BlackBerry Torch 9810 look a little unloved.
Being a touch model and offering a large 3.7-inch display mean that the screen has to be good. It offers you resolution of 800 x 400 pixels, making it comparable to a number of Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. One thing is clear here: BlackBerry has figured out that people do care about specs.
What we find interesting, however, is that this gives you a different aspect to the BlackBerry Torch 9810, so across all the current devices you have different screen ratios. In the Torch 9860's favour, this is at least fairly conventional, so when you pair it up against something like the HTC Desire S your screen real estate is effectively the same.
Voice
Voice searching did a good job of picking out for contacts, but once you get into more difficult language, like the name of our local vet for example, the success ratio drops off rapidly. At least you get the run of universal search applications to choose from, be it BlackBerry Maps, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Browser
The biggest change, however, is the browser. BlackBerry knew they had to improve it, and it really has done. It is now much faster than previously, so straight website browsing is a pleasure, with pages quick to load.
Camera
With 3.7-inches of screen on offer video certainly comes to the fore. Despite the very obvious omission of Flash video support limiting your consumption of common online video, we found that local content was handled nicely. HD media from the memory card was delivered smoothly, so if you happen to have a stack of MPEG4 movies, then you'll be able to easily enjoy them on your phone.The 5-megapixel camera on the rear of the device is supported by an LED flash, suffering from the usual shortcomings you'd expect from a phone.
Good screen, good camera and mostly good design
Software freezes and a lack of app compatibility takes the shine off this handset
Strong screen, camera and video performance are paired with attractive design, but let down by frequent crashes and a lack of general app support
Key specs
3.5mm jack, 3G, 5 megapixels, 720p, Bluetooth, GPRS, GPS, GSM, HSDPA, Li-ion battery, microSD, MP3 player, Touchscreen, Wi-Fi.
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