BlackBerry Torch 9800 touchscreen QWERTY slider review

Score

3.7 stars
"Good"

(How we score)

First class design, excellent keyboard, good call quality, solid camera, new operating system

Only a day of battery life, bulky, stale application selection, sluggish web browser

Summary

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 offers a few firsts for RIM and AT&T. The Torch is RIM's first attempt at a BlackBerry that sports both a full QWERTY keyboard and a touchscreen. It's also the first commercially available BlackBerry that runs the new BlackBerry 6 operating system, which offers a host of new features that include a pull-down notification curtain, universal search, and new virtual QWERTY keyboards.

While the device is largely an improvement over other BlackBerry models, there's still a number of areas that put the Torch 9800 behind some of the competition running other, more modern operating systems. Its battery life could use some work, too, but overall it's a device that BlackBerry fans will want to consider when purchasing their next smartphone.