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RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone

All touch and no type

RIM fingers

The BlackBerry 7 operating system's UI may lack the polish of iOS or the adaptability of Android but it still does the job. Drag the bottom menu bar up and you can can access all your apps and even reorder them. Swipe left or right and you can navigate to five other trays so you can group apps together for convenience.

RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone

Screen customisation and BlackBerry Maps

The problem is that when the apps tray is collapsed the screen is empty. Imagine Android without widgets or homescreen shortcuts and you get the idea. You can advance the apps tray to show either one, two, three or four lines of icons but a selection of background widgets would make BB7 look a lot more funky.

Tap the status bar at the top of the screen and you can instantly access all your connectivity settings while notifications appear in the bar below. The notifications bar also lets you access the sound control panel and search engine.

RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone

Messaging and touchscreen typing

Being a BlackBerry, the Torch 9860 naturally comes loaded with all the usual goodies like BB Messenger and BB Maps or if you are Daily Mail reader: Riot Assist and Riot Finder. It also has a very good messaging inbox that lets you send and receive all the types of electronic communication known to man from the one place. And if you want to get down to business, included is a full instal of Documents to Go.

The WebKit browser is satisfyingly fast and I can’t get too bent out of shape about the lack of text reflow and Flash support because you don’t get either with iOS 5 or WinPho 7.5. Another annoyance shared with iOS is a virtual keyboard that doesn’t show lower case graphics on the keys, but otherwise it's a good exemplar of the breed.

RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone

Web browsing and social networking sources

With a fast chip and plenty of RAM BB7 zips along at a very brisk pace and is quite a match for the best Android phones and even the iPhone. By using a fast and up-to-date, albeit single-core CPU with plenty of memory, RIM has finally cooked up a handset that works and feels like a modern smartphone.

RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone
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