For the most part I love the BlackBerry culture we’ve created on the internet. We tell stories, learn hacks for our devices, and even learn about new devices before they’re released. That leads to a constant stream of leaks, which then turn into news. As such, we know pretty much everything about a new BlackBerry device before RIM makes the official announcement. Today I schlepped to the western-most reaches of New York City to watch AT&T and RIM unveil their latest, the BlackBerry Torch. It was a grand announcement, with all parties talking about how excited they are to finally unveil their prized device. And make no mistake, the Torch delivers on its promises.
Again, we’ve seen most of what the Torch can do. We’ve already seen OS 6 demoed on the 9800, multiple times even. Even at BlackBerry’s own official blog we’ve seen a couple of looks at OS 6. Much of what we saw today, then, was what we already knew existed. We were just waiting for official word.
A couple of notes from what I either missed or what was newly announced today:
WiFi music sync: No, this won’t take the place of apps that wirelessly sync your iTunes music library to your BlackBerry. What it does it give you a list of all the songs in your library. If you’re out and decide you want to listen to one of those songs, you can mark it and next time you sync it will go to your device. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly a neat solution.
Double-tap zoom: On most touchscreen devices you can pinch to zoom in and out. That seems to work pretty well. There are some systems that allow you to double tap and zoom. That’s just a straight zoom, though. When you double tap on the 9800, not only do you see larger text, but it also wraps around so all of the text fits on the screen. You can kind of see this in the above video. That makes reading the web on the device a ton easier.
After playing around with it for a while, I decided that this is definitely a handset I can get behind. My best description is that this is a RIM version of Android. It takes a lot of the features I like best about that platform — such as drop-down, consolidated messages list — and puts it into the RIM context. What comes out is a phone that both consumers and enterprise users can both enjoy. My time was limited with it, but it was easy to get a feel for it in a short period of time.
As you might notice in the video, I had a little trouble with typing on the touchscreen. It happens when you’re holding a camera in one hand and the device in the other. Generally I like the feel. It’s the physical keyboard that I’m not enamored with. Yes, I generally love physical keyboards, but this one suffers from setback I had feared. The top row, while accessible, is not perfect. The tops of the keys sit right against the top part of the slider, so it feels a bit strange when you’re hitting those letters. I’m sure that will take some getting used to. It seems to be a pitfall of all slider devices.
Again, the device will be available on AT&T on August 12th, so only nine more sleeps. As CrackBerry notes, it will also be hitting Canadian carriers soon, though none of them has a release date yet. If you’re still clamoring for more, take some time to browse the specs.
Finally, just for good measure, a couple of snapshots from the presentation:
