A New Experience with BlackBerry Torch 9860

When you first look at the BlackBerry Torch 9860, you will notice that it resembles an Android mobile instead of a traditional BlackBerry.

The Good:

The Torch 9860 feels slim and light. The unit measures 11.5mm and feels very comfortable in the hand.
 
The Torch 9860 offers a 3.7 inch touchscreen that dominates the front of the screen. The bottom of the screen is reserved for the track pad and the navigation buttons (Menu, Send, Back and End). Unfortunately, the buttons are raised and they take away from the smooth design of the unit. The device would look more pleasing if the buttons were flatter.

The camera offered by the Torch 9860 is basically the same as the first Torch, although, the software has been tweaked a bit.

The camera is 5 mega pixels with an LED flash, auto-focus and Face Detection. You also get a variety of image modes such as sports, night, landscape and portrait.  There is also 720p HD video recording that offers continuous auto-focus.

You will find all the media apps grouped together in an app folder called Media.  You will also find separate apps like music, pictures, videos, podcast and Music Store.

To keep you connected while on the go, the Torch 9860 has it all. You have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, EDGE, GPRS, HSDPA and A2DP.

The BlackBerry Torch 9860 runs on RIM’s new operating system, BlackBerry 7. This operating system seems to run nice and smooth; however, the selection of apps is limited.

You will certainly have enough room to store all your music, photos and videos, because the Torch 9860 offers 4 GB of internal memory with the ability to expand up to 32 GB via a micro SD card.

The 1230mAh battery will give you a day or two if you don’t use it extensively.

You should get about 4.7 hours of talk time and av bout six hours of video playback.

The Bad:

One of the biggest disappointments of the BlackBerry Torch 9860 is the small selection of apps available. While Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system are loaded with thousands of exciting apps, somehow BlackBerry hasn’t come that far yet.

There also seems to be some problems with web browsing. There are times when it works just fine, but it can also be very slow and sluggish at times.  Unfortunately,  compared to other mobile phones, there are just too many rough edges in this area.

Aesthetically the raised buttons on the front makes the unit seem cheap. And the fact that there is no physical keyboard may be a ‘deal breaker’ for some users.