In depth: BlackBerry Torch 9800 makes 'corporate' cool
RIM's new smartphone really could cure enterprise customers of iPhone/Android envy.
By Dan Rosenbaum
August 12, 2010 06:00 AM ET
Computerworld - About nine years ago, I was walking around with a first-generation BlackBerry on my belt. That 'Berry couldn't make phone calls, it couldn't browse the Web, and it sure couldn't play music. It did just one thing: e-mail. Smartphones hadn't been invented yet, and the concept of a mobile device for sending and receiving mail was completely exotic, even in ever-compulsive New York.
The gadget world has been through a few revolutions since then, what with Sidekicks and Treos and iPhones and Droids. But one fact has remained pretty fundamental: You can have all the fun you want with that other gear, but if you're serious about e-mail -- especially corporate e-mail -- you're probably going to wind up with a BlackBerry in your pocket.Research in Motion, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company that develops and builds BlackBerries, has released a legion of the devices over the years, with each one differing from its predecessors in form and somewhat less so in features. Generally speaking, though, BlackBerries have distinctly trailed the smartphone market. They've been perfectly fine phones that were more than good enough to be corporate standard issue, but they've lacked the sexy oomph that sells gadgets to consumers. In many ways, they've been the gadget equivalent of a buzz cut: efficient, standard, corporate, boring.
BlackBerry Torch
The new operating system has a new interface, a media player, a new browser and hooks into social media, but it doesn't give you much in the way of features that you can't find in any other top-of-the-line smartphone. That may be good enough. In a world where RIM was in danger of being lapped by the competition, the Torch is a more-than-reasonable rejoinder for an enterprise manager besieged by users insisting on Android phones or iPhones.
Keyboard conundrum
The Torch's 3.2-inch touch screen is a bit of a departure from earlier BlackBerries, except the Storm. But where the Storm has only a soft on-screen keyboard, the new Torch also includes a slide-down hard QWERTY keyboard. This will be a great relief to longtime tappers. Also, the BlackBerry's hard trackpad makes a welcome return to the middle of the row of function keys.But as welcome as the hard keyboard is, it presents something of a user interface conundrum. Between the touch screen and the keyboard, there are several different ways to perform the same function on the Torch. You can see your e-mail, for instance, by tapping in a "quick access" area at the top of the screen, by tapping or clicking on an application icon, or by using the trackpad to click on either. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It is, however, unusual and a point of possible confusion.
The phone, when closed, is a tiny bit narrower and shorter than an iPhone 4, though at 0.57 inches thick and about 5.7 ounces, it's half again as thick as an iPhone and nearly a full ounce heavier. Blame the hard keyboard. Extending the keyboard adds 1.4 inches to the length. The back is rubberized plastic, and the phone has a generally solid, substantial, well-balanced feel.
There is 512MB of flash memory and 4GB of general on-board memory built in, and a 4GB microSD card is included. The phone supports quad-band GSM and HSPDA, and RIM says it supports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity. Unfortunately, although I have no reason to doubt that the phone supports 802.11n, I was unable to get it to connect to an up-to-date Apple Airport Express router.
The built-in flash camera takes 5-megapixel pictures and shoots videos with continuous autofocus. In practice, the camera was just OK, but -- in what is an unusual feature for a smartphone -- it offers the ability to select from among 10 "scenes" with preset settings, such as "face detection," "party," "beach" and so on. This can make things easy for novice photographers.
RIM claims that the Torch's battery supports about 5.5 hours of talk time, 30 hours of audio playback and six hours of video playback. The screen is crisp and clear, although it's no rival to a Droid X's Super AMOLED. The screen supports multitouch input, recognizing taps, pinches and slides. The display also rotates between landscape and portrait mode as you reorient the phone with the keyboard stowed, but it does not go to landscape if you have the keyboard open.
Setup, as one would hope for a corporate-oriented phone, was quick, smooth, and trivial -- particularly the e-mail and Exchange parts. The e-mail applications were exactly what one would expect from a BlackBerry, with mailbox sync, message filtering and display by thread (or not). If you've hardwired your fingers to the BlackBerry interface over the years, you won't be disrupted.
BlackBerry 6
The BlackBerry 6 user interface feels a lot like Android's. The home screen is initially clear except for your wallpaper, but you bring up screens of applications with an upward flick of a finger and page through them by flicking up and down or left and right. The interface supports folders, so you can group applications together, but it took some fumbling to understand that the "Back" button below the screen is how you move upward through the file structure to the home screen.In general, when using BB6 it's not always clear what you can do through a touch and what needs a click -- and whether the click should come from the trackpad, the BlackBerry button or the Back button. In the time that I worked with it, I didn't detect a consistent pattern of behavior; it may well become clearer with practice and familiarity.
As with any contemporary smartphone platform, there's an online store where you can download apps for the Torch; it's called BlackBerry App World. Don't expect the breadth of offerings available at either Apple's App Store or the Android Store -- certainly not right away. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least if developers came up with some highly useful corporate apps for the Torch in short order.
You can search for apps or browse by category and then scroll through using the trackpad. Unsurprisingly, you need to sign up for an account, but that's quick and painless, aside from the two unconscionably long license pages whose terms you need to agree to en route.
The phone comes with a 3-inch CD containing BlackBerry Desktop Software, which lets you load music onto the Torch through a USB connection; it also helps you sync notes, contacts and calendars with your desktop software if you don't do it wirelessly through the cloud. (If you've got a computer -- like a MacBook -- with a slot-loading drive, a 3-inch CD is useless. Fortunately, the software is also downloadable from RIM's site.)
