Why am I so cranky?
I've been carrying around a RIM BlackBerry Torch 9800 for a while now. It's a good phone. The full-body, 3.2-inch, capacitive touch screen is fairly responsive and has a decent 360x480 resolution. The phone's roughly half-gigahertz processor performs pretty well, but sometimes has trouble keeping up with my needs, and the adroit, though slightly buggy, operating system has gotten better over time. The Torch's slide-away keyboard is excellent and it's what, for me, makes it such an effective smartphone. I get the benefit of a large-enough-to-be-useful screen and one of the best-designed QWERTY keyboards in the industry. I do run apps on the phone, mostly Twitter (the native app), Facebook (also native), and the occasional game. On the other hand, BlackBerry's AppWorld's offerings are anemic when compared to what I get on an Apple iPhone 4, which I have also carried around.
The last time I met with RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis, we had a memorable exchange (widely reported) where I asked him why my Torch wasn't a more powerful device and, more importantly, with the strides they were making in PlayBook tablet and QNX OS development, when would it get a much-needed upgrade. As I reported here, Lazaridis danced around my question. Now, however, I have my answer: Never.
The two BlackBerry Bolds, the 9900 and 9930 are important updates of one of RIM's most popular devices—and one of my favorites. Before I carried the Torch, I had a Bold 9000. Eventually the trackball died and the phone became unusable, but I will never forget the then brilliant screen and large, easy-to-used QWERTY keyboard. The 9900 looks quite a bit like the original Bold, but it's thinner and literally packed with power and features. It has a peppy 1.2GHz processor (not dual core, though), 769MB of RAM, a super-sharp 2.8-inch screen (more on that later), a 5MP camera and an updated OS.
True to his word, Lazaridis and company did not migrate its latest phones to the wholly owned QNX operating system, which currently runs on the still-buggy PlayBook tablet. Instead, this is still the BlackBerry OS. Version 7, in fact, is described by our mobile analyst Sascha Segan as update and not a system overhaul. From what I've seen, it looks good, with, for example, more finely rendered icons.
The screen should please BlackBerry stalwarts, but it disappoints me. I don't need a tiny screen with super-high (640x480) resolution. When you pack this many pixels into a small space, the screen will appear ultra sharp—that's a good thing. The problem is that there simply is too little physical screen real estate. Today's leading smartphones, both with and without a keyboard, typically feature screens noticeably larger (and with higher resolution). Even the fact that it's a touch screen doesn't strike me as particularly innovative. I once had a phone with a similarly styled touch screen (though smaller and only resistive) and keyboard: My old Palm Treo 755p.
I'm at a loss to understand why RIM did not introduce an update to the Torch. Its first full-screen/physical keyboard smartphone was not a failure. But RIM has been treating it like one for months. Where, exactly, is the Verizon version of this BlackBerry? My Torch is only available on AT&T; a fact that made little sense considering how quickly RIM typically rolls out multiple carrier versions of its phones. Look at the new Bolds. They'll ship ready to work on AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint.
Sadly, RIM is running away as quickly as it can from the Torch. It used it to demo some nifty new Microsoft Bing functionality, but has no plans to load OS 7 on it. There are rumors of big-screen phones to come, but if you listen to RIM, the company seems uninterested in full-screen phones of any kind. If you want a big screen from RIM, you have to buy a PlayBook, but I wouldn't recommend that option right now, either.
