BlackBerry have always led the way when it comes to producing phones for the professional businessman stroke woman.
The Torch 9800 Smartphone is a natural continuation of their desire to build the ultimate phone for the Gordon Geckos and Donald Trumps of this world.
But things move quickly in the world of technology and with the recent advancements by Apple, Google and Windows mobile operating systems mean the competition has become stronger in producing work-orientated solutions for their devices.
In response to this Research In Motion (RIM) have produced a fine phone that not only builds on it’s predecessors strengths as a work based solution, it makes inroads into a new world of Apps and social interaction previously under-explored.
Ok, for starters the phone has a nice solid feel and a slider mechanism hiding a full qwerty keyboard. The keys are fairly small, but not too small and I was able to hit the right button probably 98% of the time, (if you have bananas for fingers you can of course use an on-screen alternative).
Together with the full touch screen and simple navigator buttons the phone is fully armed for all input situations and comes equipped with BlackBerry’s new OS6 operating system. For those people who are new to BlackBerry phones you may slight similarities with the Android OS navigation style.
A bottom drawer slider thing that lets you keep your most used and important apps ready for quick and easy access is excellent (The only problem I found was which ones to put there).
Another great function that makes navigation easier on the of the 9800 is Universal Search, enter a keyword and the phone will search apps, files and the internet to give you exactly what you are looking for in an instant and works brilliantly.
With such a wide range of built in apps and set up options there is a lot to look at. Even after several weeks I was still fine tuning it to my exact specification. There is 4GB of memory available, and with an SD card this can be expanded to a massive 32G, so there is plenty of space for movie files, music and pics.
Web browsing is nice and how it should look, squeeze and pinch allow you read things clearly and Wi-Fi detection is automatic so you wont run up a big bill if you have a network available.
The built in camera takes a pretty huge 5megapixels pic and with image stabilisation features and LED flash, pictures come out sharp and bright and sharing to Facebook and Twitter / Email etc is only a click away, with Apps for these built in to the OS6.
Once you have this phone set up the way you want it, it really starts to work with you and your life. As a productivity tool not much comes close and this might be the reason BlackBerry has such a strong customer loyalty base.
A small but nice features is the charger, adaptable to plug into your comp via USB or to plug in the wall, but one small quibble from giving it top marks would be the lack of case. It would be worth investing in a cheap one just to keep the phone free of scratches.
Colour wise you have two choices Black or White, personally I prefer the white one, but hey.. I’m just different like that.
With the new BlackBerry Playbook (did someone whisper iPad killer?) just around the corner, Research In Motion (RIM) are making some great devices at the moment… If you want something different from the crowd, the Torch 9800 Smartphone is definitely worth taking a look at.