As soon as I started getting BlackBerry Messenger and text messages, I noticed another cool new and useful feature.  When a new message arrives, the icon for that particular type of message appears under the time display.  Tap the icon and the main screen fades into the background, displaying message info.  Click on the message you want to read to open it.

I liked the way I could switch between the touchscreen and the physical keyboard, using whichever was the best tool for the job at the time.  For example, it’s generally much faster to dial a number using the virtual keypad, although it frequently didn’t react properly when I held down the 0 button to enter the + sign.  It took multiple attempts to dial a number starting with a +.  After you dial a phone number on the virtual keyboard, pressing the dial button (which is not virtual) requires far more pressure.  This takes a bit of getting used to.

I found the phone quality excellent.  Callers could generally not tell I was on a mobile phone and I found their voices crisp and clear.  My mother judged the speakerphone quality (on her end) to be superior to that of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 in side-by-side testing.

Multitouch is very well implemented. You can scroll through lists, pinch and zoom, and the screen reacts quickly and without any hesitation to the input.

What I really liked is the slide-out keyboard, which finally arrived in the Torch after years of rumors of its existence.  While the keyboard itself resembles that of the new Bold 9700 down to the chrome row dividers, it felt less cramped than the Bold’s and I found I was able to type much faster on it with fewer errors.  The Torch is only slightly wider than the Bold, 62 mm v. 60 m, but they’ve clearly put that silly millimeter or two to good use.

The newest version of the BlackBerry browser is also far more usable than previous versions and it displays Web pages faithfully and close to what one would expect on a desktop. The addition of tabbed browsing and thumbnails in the browser history are nice touches but don’t make up for a certain amount of slowness when panning and zooming.

I wanted to run Opera, my preferred browser on the Bold, on the Torch, but repeated attempts to install the program failed.

This is the first BlackBerry that has a built-in app store (you previously had to download it; other built-in apps include Facebook, Twitter, CNN, and the Weather Channel).  The Social Feeds social-networking app combines status updates from Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

Other major improvements include the addition of universal search and a five-megapixel camera with flash and image stabilization.  The camera doesn’t appear to have any shutter lag at all.  It has face detection (this makes certain that faces are in focus), a sports mode for capturing quickly moving subjects, and a portrait mode which promises to faithfully capture your subject’s skin tones.  The close-up mode allowed me to capture properly-focused images centimeters away from the lens.

Battery life was good and I found that the Torch easily lasted through a day of heavy use.  AT&T and RIM started selling the Torch today for $200 with a two-year contract.

The Torch is definitely a smart choice for smartphone users and offers a considerably improved user experience, one that will keep BlackBerry in the running when business travelers make a purchasing decision.

–Jonathan B. Spira is the Editor of Executive Road Warrior and Chief Analyst at Basex, a knowledge economy research firm.

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