BlackBerry Torch 9810

BlackBerry Torch 9810 - a good piece of mobile hardware and quite worth the price.

For: Well designed, fluid UI, solid build quality.


Against: Still a little bulky, battery life could have been better.

Nearly a year after the original Torch arrived in the market, RIM has revealed the Torch 2 - or 9810. From a design and form-factor point of view, the 9810 is exactly like its predecessor and the build is just as solid. The slide out QWERTY keypad is just as smooth, but the keypad could have been slightly more spread out to optimize typing. The only thing that may give the phone away would be its new color scheme: shiny silver instead of the gunmetal grey finish. It’s still just a little on the heavy side at 161g and the rubberized sides do allow you to get a good grip on it.

The Torch 9810 is equipped with a 5.0 megapixel
camera with autofocus and LED flash.

                               As usual, the bundled handsfree and cables are as good as they come. The inclusion of a smart case would have been brilliant, or a memory card for that matter, but considering the internal storage has been beefed up to 8 GB, the latter point is quite moot. It was never too hard on the eyes and the new jazzed up color combo adds a bit of elegance to the overall appearance. The 3.2-inch screen gets a decent bump in resolution, and it now runs at 480 x 640 pixels. While the exteriors might be the same, there are a few very good changes on the inside, most important among them being the processor. With the inclusion of a 1.2GHz CPU, the 9810 can now play toe-to-toe with the fastest smartphones in the market. This change, along with OS 7.0, makes for a superb browsing and in-app experience. The phone responds and moves from task to task effortlessly and screen renders are instantaneous. Browsing especially gets a shot in the arm, and we think even the fastest Android phones may struggle to keep up. Media capabilities are still quite up there with the best, though the lack of 1080p video playback might be considered a drawback. It supports XviD and DivX codecs and plays most file formats except FLV and MKV. Music playback, thanks to the audio engine’s Audio Boost and EQ presets, worked as well as RIM’s other offerings and the bundled handsfree proves well-matched to the output quality for calls and music. Although this device is equipped with a GPS module, you’ll still have to contend with BlackBerry Maps showing you in the middle of an empty screen for Indian residents. The other option is Google Maps or paying for third party software. The 5 megapixel auto focus camera (with LED flash) also remains unchanged. It features settings like image stabilization and geo tagging, face-detection, as well as continuous auto focus while recording video at 720p. Image quality is just as good as the 9800’s. Seeing as smartphones, and especially BlackBerrys, are the type of handsets that one would tend to use on a frequent basis, the Torch 9810’s battery proved to be average. It’s expected that a device of this caliber would offer a little more than just keeping in tow with the rest.