REVIEW: Blackberry Torch 9850

Intro

Blackberry was sort of my first truly real smartphone, sure the sidekick counts, but only kind of. Blackberry really did it all. I had a blackberry pearl at first, the good old 8100. I followed that with the global 8830. I sold both of these phones but really liked them for their time, my biggest issue was how slow they can be once something better comes out and how outdated they become, it happens so fast! I wanted to see the Torch 9850 (no keyboard) with my own eyes and hands to see if it had some of the same issues or if they wised up a bit.

Looks

It looks good! It is clean and some may mistake it for the newest android phone, not sure if that is what blackberry wants, but on the other hand it could be exactly what they want. It is clean and easy to use with no keyboard other than what is on screen. The lock button is not something that sticks out much, it is actually built into the top of the phone and you have to press down on top to get it to lock or unlock, it does not even look like a button. The trackpad looks good, some trackpads make me not want to use the device, but this one beckoned to me, called my name so to speak. I just wanted to mess with it.

OS

We are using blackberry OS 7, that is much better than the last time I reviewed a blackberry, a whole OS updated! It feels a bit faster than OS 6 and is definitely faster than what I used on the pearl and 8830 a long time ago. The OS has come a long way and blackberry should be proud of themselves for this. It is a good OS again, back when I had the 8100 it worked quite nicely, then again there was not a whole lot to compare it against other than feature phones and so of course it was better. Now it is finally coming back as a competitor, RIM is trying to get there and they sure are giving a good fight!

Imagery

Final Thoughts

I am finally excited to see what is next, after this one. The 9900 sounds promising after playing with this phone, I also had a LITTLE, very little time playing with the playbook at best buy and it isn't bad either. The 9900 paired with a playbook could actually be kind of decent, nothing spectacular but it could be cool. I am interested in blackberry again, not as a full time phone but as something that could be good in the future, something that could compete if they work at it even more.