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Blackberry Torch 9860
| Caractéristiques | |||
| Camera sensor | 5 MP | ||
| Weight | 135 grammes | ||
| Dimensions (mm) | 120 x 62 x 12 mm | ||
| Talk Time | 7 hours | ||
| Standby Time | 320 hours | ||
 Show all specifications
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| Internal Memory | 4 GB |
| Memory Card | MicroSD |
| SAR Level | 0.92 W/kg |
 Hide specifications | |
Florence Legrand
Translator: Sam McGeever
Test date: October 13, 2011
Translator: Sam McGeever
Test date: October 13, 2011
The Torch 9860 as a phone
The BlackBery Torch 9860 smartphone has all the connectivity options you'll need to keep in touch with the outside world, and does a good job of connecting to the network. It even manages to keep track of the signal, albeit with just a bare minimum, in spots where other phones can't pick up anything.
Just like any other BlackBerry, it has a powerful Push Mail system, meaning you can receive messages from up to ten accounts instantaneously. The search tool means you can locate a previous message quickly.
If you're thinking about using it for work, you can open and edit Word and Excel files, and the BlackBerry Protect service allows users to remotely lock and wipe the phone if it's lost or stolen. You won't be able to use it for video calls, though, because there's no front-facing camera.
It also has another flagship BlackBerry feature, loved by younger users this time, the BBM instant messaging service, which is now built right in to several apps.
The new 9860 smartphone is the latest member of the BlackBerry Torch family from RIM, which has clearly decided to make a real go of taking on its touchscreen rivals. So it's goodbye to the iconic physical keyboard: e-mails and text messages are now written using the onscreen keyboard, but is that an improvement? Is the 3.7'' up to the job? And what about that 1.2 GHz processor? We're also wondering if-like most of its predecessors-it can also boast great battery life? We'll have the answers to all these questions and more in our review ...
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Design
It's not hard to spot the BlackBerrry heritage on the Torch 9860, which comes in a very discreet black, with a quality finish and a good choice of materials: metal for the back and a soft-touch trim for the outside edges.At 135 g, it didn't really weigh us down, but we would have preferred a slighter slimmer handset. That doesn't take away from the fact that it's a treat to handle and feels very solid.
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The 3.7'', 400 x 800 pixel display is very easy on the eye. It has very wide viewing angles, more than acceptable brightness which tops out at 520 cd/m², accurate colour reproduction (for a phone, anyway) and a very decent contrast ratio of 1100:1. To put all that another way, you'll be able to read what's on screen even in bright sunlight. We suggest you keep the brightness slightly below maximum, though, so you can enjoy longer battery life.
Interface
When you want to move around through the phone's menus, or scroll through a web page or e-mail for that matter, then you can either use the touchscreen display or the optical trackpad which is found just underneath the screen. We used the screen a lot for getting through the menus and moving from one homescreen to the next, but we found that the trackpad was better-much better, in fact-when we needed a little more accuracy and wanted to select a particular word or phrase.
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The onscreen virtual keyboard turned out to be pretty accurate. It's easier to use in landscape mode, of course, but even in portrait mode, we didn't have too many typos.
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The latest software update, BlackBerry OS 7, has brought a much more attractive interface that works well with touch-based gestures. It's nowhere near as intuitive as the QNX interface found on the RIM BlackBerry Playbook tablet, but until that makes its way onto the firm's phones, it's hard to find fault with the simple logic of the current offering. In short: RIM has improved BlackBerry OS, but there's still room to tweak it further to make it 100% suited for use on a touchscreen device.
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You can customise several homescreens with your favourite shortcuts and apps
We have to admit that the handset is as responsive as we'd expect, and moving between the homsescreens is certainly smooth. The handset really zips along thanks to a combination of a powerful processor and a well-tuned OS. Whether you're downloading an app, watching a film or just browsing the web, the Torch 9860 does what you want, when you want it to. We should, however, point out that it can begin to seem a little sluggish if you're running lots of apps at once.
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Multimedia
The last thing to check on this touchscreen BlackBerry is how it does with multimedia.
And the first thing that impressed us is that downloads from the AppWorld, RIM's app store, are very fast. It might not have as many titles some of its rivals, but with 30 000 apps available for download, there's certainly enough choice.
And the first thing that impressed us is that downloads from the AppWorld, RIM's app store, are very fast. It might not have as many titles some of its rivals, but with 30 000 apps available for download, there's certainly enough choice.
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The list of apps we installed via the very fast download
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The AppWorld has over 30 000 titles
This is a smartphone that really doesn't do too badly as a camera. You'll get better results if you're outside or in a well-lit environment, with lots of electronic noise creeping into photos taken in less favourable conditions. Photos end up with plenty of detail for shots taken on a mobile, but we've already seen better. The Torch 9860 can't rival the camera on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray, which recently blew us away.
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Its performance at recording video is about average for a modern smartphone, with clips in 720p as smooth as you can expect from a mobile. If you'd rather watch other people's videos and films, you'll be glad to hear that the Torch can handle a lot of formats, including DivX and Xvid.
The audio quality was another nice surprise, with a clean signal from the headphone jack which suffers from very little interference. The speaker also sounds great with no crackle. You will, however, have to get rid of the appalling headphones and replace them with your own if you want to make the most of your music. Finally, it's a real shame that there's no FM radio given that even the cheapest of mobiles now include this feature.
The audio quality was another nice surprise, with a clean signal from the headphone jack which suffers from very little interference. The speaker also sounds great with no crackle. You will, however, have to get rid of the appalling headphones and replace them with your own if you want to make the most of your music. Finally, it's a real shame that there's no FM radio given that even the cheapest of mobiles now include this feature.
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And once a page is loaded, scrolling and zooming are both smooth, fast and accurate.
If you stick to 'ordinary' features, you can expect to get two days out of the battery, but if you spend a lot of time using social networks, BBM and browsing the web over WiFi, you'll only get a day at most.
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Blackberry Torch 9860
Pluses
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Well made handset with a great finish
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Attractive display
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Responsive with smooth inteface
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Battery life
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Decent multimedia features (camera, music, video and web browsing)
Minuses
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Can slow down when running mutliple apps
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No FM radio
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No support for Flash while browsing
The BlackBerry Torch 9860 turned out to be a great surprise and is excellent value for money. It has a gorgeous screen, decent battery life and plenty of multimedia features that are surprisingly fast. It also features a whole host of extra services, including BBM. All that's left to improve is the OS, which isn't quite yet 100% right for a touchscreen interface.
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