BlackBerry Torch 9800 Phone (AT&T)
By RIM
Comparing the major players on a high level
If you need reminders of appointments, a BlackBerry is your ONLY choice. If you use your phone for business, the Torch is better than any BlackBerry ever made. If you want to keep up with the mindless ramblings of "friends" you've never met on Facebook and Twitter and other social media, any phone released in the last year, including the Torch, is about equally qualified to waste your time. If the most important thing to you is games, then you definitely don't want a BlackBerry of any type. In general, BlackBerry designs their products to support businesspeople and then they try to include pastimes. All the other mobile devices seem to have been designed primarily as toys / time wasters. For full disclosure, I think I looked at Palm's latest offering but since it was on Verizon, I didn't even try it. Verizon's data network is pathetically slow in my area and the phone drops calls at my house.
Great things about the Torch
1. It's the best Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) out there. I am totally ADD and I need to have constant reminders. I need to get a reminder a few hours or days ahead of time, and then have my device repeat the reminder so I make sure to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do in a timely manner. You don't get that with the i-Phone, Android or Windows Phone. The i-Phone reminds you once, then you're on your own. I almost missed a class because of this... and I was the one teaching the class! Otherwise I have nothing but good things to say about the i-Phone, but that was a death blow and it went back the next day. Android doesn't remind you at all! It goes into a reminder area with a tiny little icon, and you have to press that icon to get the info. Back to the store it went! Windows Phone was equally disappointing; I didn't even buy it. Oh, don't fall for the Salesman's Universal Copout of "there's an app for that"; there isn't -- I looked and you will find forum after forum complaining about this and there is no solution. (See "Bad things about the Torch" at the bottom of this review for further info on this subject.)
2. SureType keyboard. It's the best thing about any BlackBerry and hardly anyone knows about it, including salespeople. If your fingers are bigger than a 6-month-old and you realize that proper spelling and typos reflect your level of intelligence, then SureType is for you and only BlackBerry has it. The on-screen keyboard can have 2 letters per button in the usual QWERTY pattern. Just type normally, and the BlackBerry is going to start making suggestions for words you are in the process of typing. There's a demo on the BlackBerry web site; just google "suretype blackberry". It's faster than Multitap and much easier than trying to use any on-screen or slide-out keyboard. I NEVER make a spelling mistake on a BlackBerry, well, hardly ever.
3. one of the biggest screens available.
4. Visual Voicemail - you can SEE all of your voicemails on a list along with who called, when and length of message, instead of just listening sequentially. Listen to your boss's voicemail first and listen to your chatty friend later (if you have time). The interface kind of looks like a list of emails, but when you click, a sort-of media player starts. Brilliant! It allows you to back up a little or a lot or skip forward much easier than voicemail historically allowed you to do 9 seconds at a time. Ugh! How 80's!
5. Google Maps -- you can talk to it. Press the phone key and tell it what you're looking for. It will find it on the map. Excellent if you're driving while using the navigation program, which is probably when you would be using Google Maps?! I don't think i-Phone will EVER be capable of that because you would need to have more than one button for that functionality. With the i-Phone cyclops, it will never happen, well, unless they take up screen real estate.
6. Google Mobile App -- you can talk to it. Press the phone key and tell the search engine what you're looking for. It will find it on the internet.
7. the phone -- you can talk to it. In the phone application, at the bottom-right corner of the screen; press the icon. "Call John Smith at home" in a moment you'll be connected to John Smith's home phone.
8. Switching between apps on the Torch is easier than ever. Hold the BlackBerry button down and you will see up to 9 of the last used / more popular applications in a 3x3 grid.
9. They have added kind of a tiny mousepad / select button. It's an improvement over the trackball in previous BlackBerries and makes selecting a spot to edit text waaaaayyyy easier than the Storm.
10. Additional pages besides the homepage. There's a Frequent page that is automatically populated by the last 12 programs you used. You can populate the Favorites page with any application you want. There is also a Media page and Downloads page.
11. 2-finger zoom in and zoom out, just like on the i-Phone. I guess Apple couldn't patent or copyright it.
12. You can create new folders on any page even though the documentation is all flawed. Select an app icon with the mouse pad; tap the BlackBerry button; you will see an option to Add Folder. OR you can press and hold an icon, and then select Full Menu; you will see an option to Add Folder. This is highly useful for creating a Crap folder to put all the junk that comes with the Torch. I created another to put all my email boxes in.
13. Speed is good, not lightning but very respectable on the network. Way faster than Storm 1 or 2 because of the hardware and the network. Where I live, AT&T is much faster than Verizon. If you're connected to Wi-Fi, you're on an even keel as any mobile device.
14. no more clicking the screen. A lot of people hated this about the Storm; it didn't bother me. You don't do it with the Torch.
15. you can get to a lot of different functions at the top of any home screen, like Search, Visual Voicemail, Text Messages, Emails and connectivity options.
16. Search - the magnifying glass now automatically searches your device AND the web
17. a camera with a flash -- if you know anything about photography, you know the more light the better. Other phones can only be used outdoors during the daytime, unless you like grainy photos of course. But be warned that the camera freezes quite often.
18. a video camera with a light. It's bright. The light is my go-everywhere flashlight. While others are scrambling to find a flashlight, I whip out my searchlight that could spot planes over London.
19. the chargers from the BlackBerry Storm work with the Torch
Bad things about the Torch
1. the camera freezes all too often -- hopefully RIM will fix this soon with a software upgrade.
2. Invariable snooze time and no "snooze all" -- Ironically , if I could give the Torch 4.5 stars, this is why it would lose half a star. 15 years ago, I had a Palm Pilot. When the Palm gave you a reminder, you could say "remind me in 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour...", incrementally up to 7 days I think. I could even "Snooze All". The BlackBerry snooze button will allow you to get a reminder in 5 to 30 minutes -- that's it -- and you must set the number of minutes ahead of time in the options. Sometimes I need the device to nag me again in 5 minutes; sometimes I don't need another reminder for a week. Despite outcries from the BlackBerry Storm community, RIM has chosen not to improve their machines to this point. We count on technology to be cumulative but in this case all of the phone manufacturers seemed to have forgotten an important lesson from the past.
That's about it. I almost love this phone and it does EVERYTHING I need it to. If RIM fixes these problems, I can't see ever changing phones, but RIM has a habit of creating something and then moving on to the next product, so I'm not holding my breath. But basically, after a long search, this is the best product available for me (and other business people).
By RIM
 |
| BlackBerry Torch 9800 Phone (AT&T) |
Comparing the major players on a high level If you need reminders of appointments, a BlackBerry is your ONLY choice. If you use your phone for business, the Torch is better than any BlackBerry ever made. If you want to keep up with the mindless ramblings of "friends" you've never met on Facebook and Twitter and other social media, any phone released in the last year, including the Torch, is about equally qualified to waste your time. If the most important thing to you is games, then you definitely don't want a BlackBerry of any type. In general, BlackBerry designs their products to support businesspeople and then they try to include pastimes. All the other mobile devices seem to have been designed primarily as toys / time wasters. For full disclosure, I think I looked at Palm's latest offering but since it was on Verizon, I didn't even try it. Verizon's data network is pathetically slow in my area and the phone drops calls at my house.
Great things about the Torch
1. It's the best Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) out there. I am totally ADD and I need to have constant reminders. I need to get a reminder a few hours or days ahead of time, and then have my device repeat the reminder so I make sure to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do in a timely manner. You don't get that with the i-Phone, Android or Windows Phone. The i-Phone reminds you once, then you're on your own. I almost missed a class because of this... and I was the one teaching the class! Otherwise I have nothing but good things to say about the i-Phone, but that was a death blow and it went back the next day. Android doesn't remind you at all! It goes into a reminder area with a tiny little icon, and you have to press that icon to get the info. Back to the store it went! Windows Phone was equally disappointing; I didn't even buy it. Oh, don't fall for the Salesman's Universal Copout of "there's an app for that"; there isn't -- I looked and you will find forum after forum complaining about this and there is no solution. (See "Bad things about the Torch" at the bottom of this review for further info on this subject.)
2. SureType keyboard. It's the best thing about any BlackBerry and hardly anyone knows about it, including salespeople. If your fingers are bigger than a 6-month-old and you realize that proper spelling and typos reflect your level of intelligence, then SureType is for you and only BlackBerry has it. The on-screen keyboard can have 2 letters per button in the usual QWERTY pattern. Just type normally, and the BlackBerry is going to start making suggestions for words you are in the process of typing. There's a demo on the BlackBerry web site; just google "suretype blackberry". It's faster than Multitap and much easier than trying to use any on-screen or slide-out keyboard. I NEVER make a spelling mistake on a BlackBerry, well, hardly ever.
3. one of the biggest screens available.
4. Visual Voicemail - you can SEE all of your voicemails on a list along with who called, when and length of message, instead of just listening sequentially. Listen to your boss's voicemail first and listen to your chatty friend later (if you have time). The interface kind of looks like a list of emails, but when you click, a sort-of media player starts. Brilliant! It allows you to back up a little or a lot or skip forward much easier than voicemail historically allowed you to do 9 seconds at a time. Ugh! How 80's!
5. Google Maps -- you can talk to it. Press the phone key and tell it what you're looking for. It will find it on the map. Excellent if you're driving while using the navigation program, which is probably when you would be using Google Maps?! I don't think i-Phone will EVER be capable of that because you would need to have more than one button for that functionality. With the i-Phone cyclops, it will never happen, well, unless they take up screen real estate.
6. Google Mobile App -- you can talk to it. Press the phone key and tell the search engine what you're looking for. It will find it on the internet.
7. the phone -- you can talk to it. In the phone application, at the bottom-right corner of the screen; press the icon. "Call John Smith at home" in a moment you'll be connected to John Smith's home phone. 8. Switching between apps on the Torch is easier than ever. Hold the BlackBerry button down and you will see up to 9 of the last used / more popular applications in a 3x3 grid.
9. They have added kind of a tiny mousepad / select button. It's an improvement over the trackball in previous BlackBerries and makes selecting a spot to edit text waaaaayyyy easier than the Storm.
10. Additional pages besides the homepage. There's a Frequent page that is automatically populated by the last 12 programs you used. You can populate the Favorites page with any application you want. There is also a Media page and Downloads page.
11. 2-finger zoom in and zoom out, just like on the i-Phone. I guess Apple couldn't patent or copyright it.
12. You can create new folders on any page even though the documentation is all flawed. Select an app icon with the mouse pad; tap the BlackBerry button; you will see an option to Add Folder. OR you can press and hold an icon, and then select Full Menu; you will see an option to Add Folder. This is highly useful for creating a Crap folder to put all the junk that comes with the Torch. I created another to put all my email boxes in.
13. Speed is good, not lightning but very respectable on the network. Way faster than Storm 1 or 2 because of the hardware and the network. Where I live, AT&T is much faster than Verizon. If you're connected to Wi-Fi, you're on an even keel as any mobile device. 14. no more clicking the screen. A lot of people hated this about the Storm; it didn't bother me. You don't do it with the Torch.
15. you can get to a lot of different functions at the top of any home screen, like Search, Visual Voicemail, Text Messages, Emails and connectivity options.
16. Search - the magnifying glass now automatically searches your device AND the web
17. a camera with a flash -- if you know anything about photography, you know the more light the better. Other phones can only be used outdoors during the daytime, unless you like grainy photos of course. But be warned that the camera freezes quite often.
18. a video camera with a light. It's bright. The light is my go-everywhere flashlight. While others are scrambling to find a flashlight, I whip out my searchlight that could spot planes over London.
19. the chargers from the BlackBerry Storm work with the Torch
1. the camera freezes all too often -- hopefully RIM will fix this soon with a software upgrade.
2. Invariable snooze time and no "snooze all" -- Ironically , if I could give the Torch 4.5 stars, this is why it would lose half a star. 15 years ago, I had a Palm Pilot. When the Palm gave you a reminder, you could say "remind me in 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour...", incrementally up to 7 days I think. I could even "Snooze All". The BlackBerry snooze button will allow you to get a reminder in 5 to 30 minutes -- that's it -- and you must set the number of minutes ahead of time in the options. Sometimes I need the device to nag me again in 5 minutes; sometimes I don't need another reminder for a week. Despite outcries from the BlackBerry Storm community, RIM has chosen not to improve their machines to this point. We count on technology to be cumulative but in this case all of the phone manufacturers seemed to have forgotten an important lesson from the past.
That's about it. I almost love this phone and it does EVERYTHING I need it to. If RIM fixes these problems, I can't see ever changing phones, but RIM has a habit of creating something and then moving on to the next product, so I'm not holding my breath. But basically, after a long search, this is the best product available for me (and other business people).
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