BlackBerry Torch 9850 is the recently released smartphone of BlackBerry. This phone is one important milestone in the history of RIM with a 3.7 inch touch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 unlike the usual BlackBerries that usually sticks to QWERTY keyboard and 2.8 inch screen. This is the first all-touchscreen smartphone from RIM.
What is it?
It has various magnificent features that attract the users and make them wonder that it is a fight for iphone. It is important to discuss about this phone because RIM has used its fastest ever chip used by it for a smartphone to power the latest BlackBerry 7 OS. Will such a leap have a profound effect on customer’s attraction to it? Will it be enough for it to compete in today’s smartphone world?
Design
The general overview of BlackBerry Torch 9850 is similar to general RIM models, with chrome and black. All parts of the phone is polished smooth except the rear and the battery door is of soft-finish and feels like a plastic. The mute/pause/play key is positioned between volume keys unlike the old layout and that prevents the accidental activation of lock and mute keys.
The camera of BlackBerry Torch 9850 has a continuous autofocus and LED flash and is of 5 megapixel. It provides a lot of environment to click pictures and the captured image is sharp, with good detail and color accuracy. Videos are impressive and smooth with an excellent sound capture. The close up shots, video recording, image stabilization etc are reasonable though not marvelous.The side key which is duel-stage is hard to press for a quick snap and so the user has to use only the on-screen camera for that cases. Also the camera feature lack proving more control to the user over the contrast and brightness.
Hardware
One of the important feature that surprises the user is that the BlackBerry Torch 9850 is too light. It weighs 135 G on par with the compared iphone 4 which is 137 G. BlackBerry Torch 9850 has a 768 MB RAM and runs on 1.2 GHz processor. The usual features like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS are provided, with an additional feature of magnetic compass to support reality applications.
Software
Navigating the BlackBerry 9850 is smooth but it is still slow showing hour glasses even with a 1.2 GHz processor and 768 MB of RAM. Some more features are supported due to the OS 7 like voice-activated universal search, enables third party applications like 3D games, BBM connected apps and augmented reality with magnetic compass. It is all the same experience as with old BlackBerry but just the difference is that it runs smoothly here. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Google Maps, and other usual applications are provided in the apps store but no any other interesting ones are found. But there are some others which interest the users like BlackBerry Protect, BlackBerry Travel, and preloaded Podcasts.
The software also includes instant messaging clients like Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, and AIM; incoming instant messages come to the screen and so are the emails, texts, and other activities of social networks. There is also a facility to link all the contacts of any channel, so that you can quickly get in touch with people. This kind of applicataion is very good and fast enough.
Performance
Call quality of BlackBerry 9850 is good. And during conference calls the base speaker’s voice is definitely good. It comes with 1230 mAh battery, same as that of Bold and holds charge for the same time as that of Bold. In one busy day we can’t expect the battery to remain charged througout the day. Compared to this, the old models are fair enough.
Key features
The important features of this model includes 1.2 GHz processor with 768MB RAM. Camera is good and it has a 720p HD video recording, face detection, continuous auto-focus and image stabilization are its other features. It also has a digital compass thereby providing augmented reality apps. It has an MP3 Media player, video player, document viewer and also has an optical track pad. It provides for multiple touch input method, social feeds and NFC support.
Price and availability
The cost of BlackBerry 9850 is $200 which amounts to 9,832/- in Indian Rupees.
The up side
The phone as a whole has a big and bright display which is duel mode and sharp looking with a good camera and 720p video. The software of this phone is responsive. It has a major advantage of having augmented reality apps along with 3D.
The down side
The battery life is poor which makes a significant point. Also the applications are not much impressive. Virtual keyboard practically brings down the model, and added with it is the reduced speed in spite of 768MB RAM. Also it lacks compatibility for old BlackBerry applications.
Bottomline
The first all-smartphone and a break through phone for RIM but not a great one.
