In a stunning display of “you couldn’t have announced this last week?” RIM has announced the BlackBerry Torch – a sliding BlackBerry touchpad smartphone WITH a hardware keyboard.
It’s safe to say that this would have given some iPhone 4 buyers some pause, so it’s strange that they couldn’t get the news out the door, oh say five days earlier. Yes, I said touchpad – it’s unclear right now whether the screen is a touchscreen (there are a lot of reports saying yes) but it’s also got a touchpad at the bottom… talk about your kitchen sink design!
Still, the phone looks pretty cool. It’s GSM/HSPA and it’ll roll out on Telus and Rogers (and Bell, apparently – but I’m not dead sure on it.)
It’s rolling fast too – August 12 on AT&T in the US at $199.99 on a two year agreement.
Here’s the big bomb: it comes with BlackBerry 6. Honestly RIM? You had 6 in the wings and you waited until FOUR DAYS after the Canadian iPhone launch to tell us? Do you have any idea how infuriating that is? Still, glad to see you got it out the door, it was sorely needed.
The Torch comes with BB6, a webkit browser (finally!), a 5MP camera, Bluetooth, Wifi (including wireless N – I would imagine 2.4GHz), GPS, and 512MB RAM.
I’m concerned about the screen size – at 3.2″ and 360×480, it looks positively cramped in comparison to the 3.5″ iPhone screen and the massive 4.0″ EVO. We’ll have to wait and see if BlackBerry 6 optimizes the use of space on the screen, this may be a total non-issue.
I’m happy to see RIM get BB6 out the door, and I’m happy to see the Torch. It looks like a great phone, and will hopefully attract the following it deserves.
It occurs to me that if egregiously large early termination fees are in place to recover costs for expensive hardware, why is it that I can’t just give the hardware back?
