Blackberry is going on sale with the Torch 9860 in India today, and we had a quick hands-on a couple of days back. The 9860 is a full touch screen with no physical keyboard. The screen is 3.7″ with four buttons and an optical trackpad in between. The phone features a 5 Megapixel camera is capable of 720p HD output alongside a 1.2 GHz processor / 768MB RAM.
Blackberry has a decent hardware with a metal back cover. The entire top portion is a lock button. Without a physical QWERTY torch 9860 takes a different approach when compared to the earlier iterations of the Torch series and we quite like the light weight design.
The Torch 9860 features 4GB internal storage and offers 32GB expansion via Micro SD slot. The back is chrome finish with a metal back finish, while the rest is plastic.
The left side of the device features a Micro USB port. The 3.5mm audio jack, volume toggle and the dedicated camera button are all on the other side.
The onscreen key of the 9860 on first look is fairly spaced out, but despite the capacitive nature of the screen, typing on the same isn’t a pleasant experience. Long time Blackberry users wouldn’t be impressed, nor the Android / iOS lot.
The resistive nature of the screen continues in the menus. You can’t click and drag icons like you would expect on most other full touch screens, Blackberry has implemented the old Windows Mobile style ‘long press for options’ approach. Someone around us called this the time machine effect – takes you half a decade back!
The Blackberry Torch 9860 is priced below Rs 30,000 in India and we don’t expect this to attract anyone considering a Samsung Galaxy S II or iPhone 4. If you are Blackberry Torch / Storm users, do let us know what you think about the 9860.
