The New Blackberry Torch Blends A Touchscreen With A Qwerty Keypad

The success of the Android platform in the mobile phone market along with the huge popularity of the Apple iPhone has caused RIM to rethink their strategy with regards to their Blackberry range of handsets.  These phones were once the corporate mans companion, but have now been geared up to appeal to a slightly more mainstream market without losing any of the appeal that made them a favorite with the business user.  The best example of this revamp is the new Blackberry Torch a model combining the well known physical keypad with a new high quality touchscreen.

When you pick up the device for the first time the phone instantly feels like a quality and well constructed device as you come to expect from a Blackberry.  At 161 grammes in weight the phone feels sturdy but at the same time the weight does not hinder the phone in any way.  In order to incorporate the 3.2 inch display the Qwerty keypad has had to be located on a new slider mechanism hidden behind the screen.  This is the major talking point about this new model and has a couple of huge advantages.  Firstly it enables the phone to be used purely via the touchscreen for general duties such as taking a call or surfing the web, with the keypad only being deployed to compose a message or an e mail.  This also helps to keep the overall dimensions of the phone down to just 111 x 62 x 14.6mm, a size small enough to appeal to the youth market where factors such as size are crucial.

The Blackberry Torch comes with a wealth of multimedia features that ensure that the phone is a capable camera and portable music player.  With regards to taking a photograph the Torch offers a high quality image of 5 mega pixels which breaks down into a 2592 x 1944 resolution.  The results are pleasing with images captured in daylight and for photos taken in lower lighting conditions the phone benefits from an LED flash.  As an audio player the phone offers a 3.5mm headphone jack together with 4GB of internal storage which means plenty of space for your music collection.

The Blackberry Torch may well prove the perfect crossover handset to take the brand the the lucrative youth market thanks to its modern looks, great media facilities and excellent social networking features.

The Blackberry Torch and the HTC Wildfire S are available now.