BlackBerry Torch 9850

This is a handset that would go on to be known by many names (Storm 3, Touch...) before receiving its final moniker: Torch 9850. Why all the pseudonyms, and why choose to confusingly overlap this with the somewhat similar but rather different Torch 9810 that's also officially launching today.
Maybe RIM didn't know what to make of this keyboard-free phone. Maybe the company wanted to distance itself from the Storm. Or, maybe what we have here is a smartphone that's trying to find an identity by sadly ditching the feature that, for many, makes a BlackBerry a BlackBerry: the physical keyboard. How does this smoothie compare to the others, and is it worth sacrificing all the QWERTY wonder found within the 9810? Read on to find out
 We'll just get this out of the way: the Torch 9850 is not a particularly good-looking phone from the front. The design concept is that of a "waterfall" of glass flowing over the device, a seamless, curving pane that welcomes the curious, clumsy imprint of your fingers. That's all well and good, but that purity of flow is ruined by four oddly proportioned buttons and an optical touchpad at the bottom, sticking out of this current like a bunch of bricks.

Hardware :
That's not to say that physical controls can't look nice -- the set on the Droid Charge look rather good and fit in with the shape of the phone. Here, though, they're just sort of all in a row, like a five-year-old's first attempt at Bedazzling a mouse. Capacitive buttons hidden beneath the glass would be far more agreeable to our aesthetic sensibilities, but these physical inputs at least feel comfortable to the touch. Oh, and they light up pretty, too.
Software : We delved into BlackBerry OS 7 over in our 9930 review, so we'll refer you there if you're curious about what's new and how it helps out things here. Suffice it to say, though, that there isn't exactly a shocking amount of fresh meat in this bundle of software, and when it comes to the Torch 9850 there's one annoying issue: the lack of a proper home screen. Boot up the phone the first time and you're presented with a lot of display that can be filled with menus but nary a widget or shortcut. Basically, it serves only as a good place to show off your wallpaper. Great.

The BlackBerry integrated search function is a little less useful here than on the other handsets since you can't just start typing -- with only a virtual keyboard you have to first tap on the search icon. But, do tap on it and you'll find an excellent way to dig up any 'ol contact or favorite or document or whatever. Once tapped you can use the impressively accurate voice recognition or struggle with the virtual keyboard, a keyboard that is... adequate.

It has a very similar layout to the on-screen keyboard found on the earlier Torch, but things are rather more square here. As virtual keyboards go it's fine, auto-suggesting as you type and of course using the same smarts that make physical BlackBerry keyboards so nice to use. (Hit space in an e-mail address to automatically add '@' or '.' in the appropriate places, for example.) But, the virtual keys are small and each time you try to find them you'll probably find yourself wishing you had a real keyboard, which you could have if you'd bought the 9810 instead.

The phone comes pre-installed with a full version of Documents To Go, enabling the creation of Word-like, Excelesque and PowerPointish documents. The Torch of course also has full access to the contents of the App World. At this point there is indeed a solid selection of apps, but whether there are enough and, more importantly, the right kind is of course up to you.

Finally, and most notably in this latest OS, is the new browser, which will do your HTML5 up right but turn its nose right up at Flash. Pages load snappily, scroll and zoom smoothly, and the phone scored a very healthy 2,668ms SunSpider score. That matches the score on the Bold 9930 -- unsurprising given they're running the same basic internals. Also unsurprising is that battery life here is not as good, managing six hours and 50 minutes on our intense rundown test. That's nearly an hour and a half short of the 9930 on Verizon, likely thanks in part to the larger display here.

Regardless, that's much higher than your average Android smartphone and we think users will have no problem getting through a full business day -- even if your full business day is more five-to-nine than nine-to-five.

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