RIM BlackBerry Torch 9850 (Verizon Wireless)

Research In Motion is living in its own world, divorced from the reality of the smartphone market. The BlackBerry Torch 9850 on Verizon Wireless is only the latest example. Like the similar Sprint and U.S. Cellular versions, the Torch 9850 is a beautiful touch screen cell phone that's neither as powerful, easy to use, or capable as its Android or keyboarded BlackBerry brethren, despite its up-to-the-minute hardware specs.

Design and Call Quality
When turned off, the Torch 9850 certainly looks good. It measures 4.7 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.8 ounces. The soft touch back panel and smooth front coating are classy, and the device feels suitably expensive to hold. The 3.7-inch, 480-by-800-pixel, plastic touch screen matches the HTC Droid Incredible 2's ($199.99, 3.5 stars) in size and resolution. It's reasonably bright and colorful, but a step down from behemoths like the Motorola Droid Bionic ($299.99, 4.5 stars) and HTC Thunderbolt ($249.99, 4 stars). Four hardware buttons sit beneath the screen, along with a redundant touchpad that serves little purpose. Typing on the on-screen keyboard is a royal pain. The portrait mode keys are too small to touch accurately, and the landscape keyboard covers too much of the screen to use with any regularity.

The Torch 9850 is a true world phone, with dual-band EV-DO Rev A (850/1900 MHz), quad-band EDGE (850/1900/1800/1900 MHz), and single-band UMTS (2100 MHz) support. It also hooks into 802.11b/g/n networks?my own 802.11n network was no problem?but doesn't connect to Verizon's 4G LTE network. The SIM card slot is locked, so you must pay Verizon's exorbitant rates when traveling overseas. Sprint and U.S. Cellular both unlock the SIM card slot so you can use local, prepaid SIMs that are much cheaper, although you temporarily lose your phone number in the process.?

Call quality was good, but not great. Voices sounded perfectly intelligible in the earpiece, although there was a little bit of noise around each caller's spoken syllables that shouldn't have been there. Transmissions were a little thin-sounding through the microphone. Reception was fine. Calls sounded clear through an Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars). Voice dialing worked perfectly over Bluetooth without training. The speakerphone sounded fine and went quite loud. Battery life was excellent at 7 hours and 42 minutes of talk time.

Hardware, OS, and Apps
BlackBerry 7 OS is a useful upgrade to an old platform. The new WebKit browser is a huge improvement, now on par with full-screen browsers on other devices. The built-in Facebook and Twitter clients are good. BlackBerrys are still great messaging devices, and are easy for company IT departments to deploy and manage. You get support for push-email for up to 10 accounts, plus BlackBerry Messenger. It only syncs properly with Microsoft Exchange Server if you have BlackBerry Enterprise Server installed at your company, though.

As with the BlackBerry Bold 9930, the Torch 9850 packs a 1.2GHz, single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8655 CPU. There's also 768MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage (down from 8GB on the Bold 9930). The OS is quite responsive, even with the extra graphics processing required for the larger touch screen.

As we've already mentioned in other BlackBerry handset reviews, BlackBerry App World is a disaster. It's arguably even worse on the Torch 9850, as fewer apps show up as compatible with this handset than on standard, QWERTY-equipped BlackBerrys (although that's steadily improving). As you read this, RIM is busy polishing a new version 3.0 that should address some of the more glaring shortcomings, including a new search feature and additional suggested app lists. Hopefully it will be easier to use and much more reliable. Regardless, think of the Torch 9850 as a well-equipped feature phone, rather than a proper smartphone, as you won't find much joy in the third-party app selection.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The microSD card slot and standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack make this a good music player, just like other BlackBerrys. In addition to the 4GB of internal storage, RIM throws in a 16GB microSD card, which is welcome; my own 32GB SanDisk card also worked fine. The music player app is one of the few bright spots, along with the WebKit browser; when playing tracks, you can tap on the artist or track name, which then cues up a search for other similar tracks. Navigation is also easy, and album art graphics are large and colorful. Music tracks sounded punchy through Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones ($99, 4 stars). Standalone videos played smoothly in full screen mode and looked vibrant, both in standard definition and widescreen high definition (720p), which the handset transcoded on the fly.

The 5-megapixel camera has an LED flash and continuous auto-focus. Test photos were about average, with decent resolution and solid light balance, but too much grain in darker rooms and not quite enough color vibrancy outdoors. The autofocus takes a second or two to lock in. The Torch 9850 is a decent camcorder; it records smooth, but dark and slightly soft, high-definition videos at 1280-by-720-pixels and 30 frames per second.

Despite its obvious improvements over last-generation BlackBerrys, the Torch 9850 is a disappointment. The 9850 swaps out a BlackBerry's best feature, its excellent hardware keyboard, for frustrating, subpar touch keyboard. There's no reason to go for this. The Bold 9930 is a better choice; it offers a sublime hardware keyboard, plus a smaller touch LCD that you can ignore most of the time, especially with the included trackpad. But if you want a full-blown touch screen phone, you have plenty of better options, including the HTC Thunderbolt, the Motorola Droid Bionic, the Apple iPhone 4 ($199.99, 4 stars), and the Samsung Droid Charge ($299.99, 4 stars). The Android phones hook into Verizon's blazing 4G LTE data network, and all sport larger screens; some even have dual-core CPUs. The Apple iPhone 4, meanwhile, has the best third-party app market in the industry, with over 400,000 apps available; Android Market has over 250,000 as well.?

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 7 hours 42 minutes

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