Blackberry Torch – The Blinding Light in iPhone and Android's Eyes.

You asked for it - and here it is the Blackberry Torch review. I was please to be told by my service provider that my Torch would be delivered in 3 to 5 days. When it arrived I immediately knew from the packaging that BB had upped their game!

Solid and small black box - innocently holding the beast within... I could hardly contain myself as I opened the packaging to reveal my new soul mate! The size was similar to my Bold but it was all screen. A simple slide and the qwerty keyboard revealed itself in all its glory. Now that's what I am talking about - the best of both world... Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too!!!

Powering on the Torch I was impressed with the screen quality and I chose to follow the tutorial. Not being accustomed to a multi touch Operating System (and the torch has the latest BB OS version 6) I found this most helpful for giving me a quick understanding of how to literally flip through my pics or emails, and squeeze closer into picture, web pages and emails.

The mini disk within the box allowed me to install the latest Blackberry desktop which then asked if I wanted to run a transfer wizard. I ran the Wizard and this transferred all my emails, contacts, calendar info and Blackberry Messenger contacts in one fowl swoop. A well thought out upgrade plan on BB's part.

The camera is leaps and bounds better than my bold with 5 mega pixel capabilities. The browser is much more functional and has TABBED Browsing - like WoW! 3G makes browsing speeds a pleasure and the BB YouTube application proves that live video streaming is possible and actually viable on the torch. However, the negative element that I have noticed is that the rear below the keyboard does get rather hot during video playback.
The video camera function also works very well and allows easy up-loading of your clips to YouTube. The torch syncs with iTunes and can therefore replace your ipod, another Wow!

As with all touch screens it has a proximity sensor which disengages the screen; so that you don't hit any keys by mistake with your face during a call. This works well for the most part however you may have a harder time if you are left handed due to the sensors placement being more effective when holding the phone with your right hand.

The battery is great without wireless Lan and Bluetooth enabled (a couple of days) but will still get you through an entire day with both of these on, in addition to heavy voice use.

The phones performance is smooth and there is no real lag between finger strokes and the phones reaction time. I only noticed minor lags if I was viewing really big pictures or video and that was only until it managed to get its cache initialised.

All in all I love my new torch – I now just need to get some type of a pouch to work with the slide-out keyboard!!!

BTFD (Byteboy Thought For the Day)

I use Linux on my desktop, yes I am that much of a nerd, so I should by rights be an Android Smart phone fan (in case you did not know Android is based on Linux). However as long as Blackberry keeps producing exemplary handsets with performance and functionality and no bandwidth fees - with Blackberry I will stay!

As for iPhone well the whole antenna debacle really put me off...

ByteBoy Out !