BlackBerry Torch Review

Research In Motion (RIM) has long been a giant in the smartphone game. Their BlackBerry device has long been a staple of the phone world, holding a huge portion of the smartphone market since its popularity in the mid 90's. Lately, RIM has been somewhat quiet on their development front, and has given way somewhat to Apple and Android phones in its hold on the market, though the BlackBerry Torch seems to be its attempt to fight back against these two and reclaim its old title. Sporting the new BlackBerry OS6, the phone promised to bring change to the BlackBerry line and offer stiff competition to Apple and Google, but can an OS upgrade and the features of the Torch reassert RIM as a leader of the smartphone world?

When you first take the Torch out of the box, the first thing that hits you is the sense of appreciation for the form-factor change. Instead of the traditional "everything on the front" design of the old BlackBerries, RIM opted to give the torch a slider, giving it a sleeker look more in line with the new Palm devices. The touchscreen is not as large as some of its competitors, such as the HTC Evo, though it functions as it should and works well with the new OS design.

The OS provides a familiar feel to the older BlackBerry OS's, though it's clearly appropriate that it was designed with a core focus on simplicity. This may come as a relief to more casual users of older BlackBerry phones, as the old OS was not as simple in many aspects as it should have been. The phone's physical features seem large on-par with the other phones it's competitive with. The camera is 5 mega-pixels, just like the iPhone 4, and the screen resolution, while not as impressive as the iPhone Retina display, looks similar to other recently-released smartphones.

Overall the Torch may not impress all smartphone geeks, though for BlackBerry users, this phone will be an absolute boon. Perhaps if RIM combined its new OS with a phone specifically designed with superior features, rather than features equivalent to other phones, it could see sweeping success.