Im gunna start off my first real blog post with a review of the Blackberry Torch 9800 and maybe I will make a quick comparison between the 9800 and the iPhone 4. I have used the Torch since its release (which came in early October in Canada) and to put it simply, I am pretty pleased with it. My girlfriend has had the iPhone 4 since about a month after its release, and I have had the chance to use it fairly extensively to get an idea of how it compares to the 9800. The touch screen is really handy and easy to use. It is far evolved from the days of the storm where you had to click the screen. The screen of the torch is very similar, if not exactly the same as the screen on the iPhone 4 (and previous generations) or the iPod Touch, for those who have never tried out the iPhone. There is no clicking involved in the touch screen, you simply tap the button that you want. The touch keyboard is quite smooth and easy to use. If you are typing on the phone while it is upright (not tilted on the side for the larger keyboard) and you don’t have super thin fingers, you will end up pressing more the one letter at a time, and you will most likely end up pressing the wrong button, but the auto-correct is really useful. At first it’s a little difficult to use, but after about a week of using the touch screen, the auto-correct will develop a memory of the words that you commonly use and miss-spell, and then typing on the touch screen becomes a breeze. I actually found that when typing quickly on the touch keyboard (ie. making a lot of mistakes) the blackberry does a much better job of auto-correcting to the word that you actually intended to spell, as opposed to the iPhone 4, which somehow comes up with some really ridiculous words that you had no intention to use.
Moving on from the touch screen, the slide out physical keyboard is really handy for those who are already blackberry lovers because it is pretty much the same keyboard that you are used to. The key travel (the distance the key moves up and down when clicked) is a bit less that you might be used to but I’m guessing that is a result of having to slim down the size to make room for the slider function and larger screen. I love having the physical keyboard in addition to the touch screen because I find that I can type without looking when I’m walking in a crowd etc, whereas I have a bit of trouble typing messages with the touch screen when I’m not staring right at it. The optical trackpad is a big improvement over the scroll ball. I found that the ball got dust and dirt and other stuff jammed in it and sometimes messed up, requiring a lot of people to pull out the ball and clean it, or even replace it all together. Another problem I had with the ball was that if you were eating and you decided to check your phone with greasy fingers, the grease would get all over the ball and the result in glitchy scrolling. The trackpad more or less eliminates all these problems, and I for one am happy with the improvement
BB OS6 is a huge improvement over past OS’s. The layout is vary clean and enjoyable to use. Web browsing is much improved and much more useable that previous generations.
One thing that I love about my Torch that the iPhone doesn't have is the UMA feature. For those of you who have no idea what this is, it basically connects to a Wi-Fi network when available and if you have a decent carrier and plan, then your torch can use the WiFi to make calls and send texts that don't count towards your monthly usage. If you have a carrier that is a little more greedy or just doesn't support the UMA function, than I guess it isn’t a huge bonus, but at the very least it will act as a signal boost when you are home/in a Wi-Fi hotspot (which is very helpful for a student who has bad service on a campus that has campus-wide Wi-Fi). Personally, when I’m in my basement at home, (where I have my TV and gaming systems) I quite literally get 0 bars, but with UMA i don’t have to worry about missing calls/texts when I’m down there, because any texts that I send/receive can just go through the Wi-Fi....so when you want to take advantage of UMA, you just turn on your phone’s Wi-Fi, and connect to a network, and what happens is, if the Wi-Fi signal is strong enough, you will see your signal bar disappear and the “3G” will change to “UMA” and you will see the Wi-Fi signal indicator below it. I just find this to be a really neat and useful feature because it saves me minutes on my plan and is great for a house/apartment with terrible reception.
As far as the looks/build quality goes, the Torch is a well designed phone that is easy on the eye and looks pretty cool. It might not be as sleek and seamless as the iPhone, but my prediction is that it is much more durable than the iPhone. I have dropped my Torch dozens of times from various heights onto various surfaces, (which have been concrete sidewalks a few times) and the blackberry has taken the blows in stride. Although it may be a good idea, I don’t use a case, as I find that it takes away from the look of the phone, and makes it bulkier in my pocket. My blackberry has a few dings and scratches from hitting the pavement a few times, but the screen is flawless, not as much as a single scratch, and the slider mechanism is unscaved, sliding just like it did out of the box.
If I can think of one con of the 9800 it would be that there are a couple small glitches and problems that may be a little annoying (most of these are actually a result of a 3rd party app, which you cant fault the device for). However I have yet to encounter an issue that isn’t solved by a quick hard reboot (by hard reboot I mean by pulling the battery while the phone is still on, waiting about 30 seconds, and putting it back). This practice seems to solve every glitch whether it is a result of user error, or just a software malfunction. RIM recommends that you do a hard reboot at least every month. I don’t usually follow this recommendation, but instead just pull the battery whenever I encounter a problem, such as a non-responsive app etc.
Anyway, I think I will wrap it up here. If you have any questions or comments please do not hesitate to leave a comment and I will try my best to get back to you or answer your question as quickly as I can.
Cheers.
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