HOT STUFF

10/11

20 PAGES OF THE BEST NEW GEAR MONEY CAN BUY

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BlackBerryTorch9860CarryingtheTorchfor touchscreens £420 | uk.blackberry.com If anyone ever tells you that BlackBerrys are useless without QWERTY keypads, smack them around the face with a 9860 and then sit them down for a lesson in touchscreen typing. The 9860’s 3.7in, 800x480 LCD touchscreen is the biggest of any BlackBerry yet, while a 5MP camera with 720p video recording puts it on a level, photographically speaking, with the iPhone 4. Then there’s the fact that, when it comes to communications, the Torch makes email on other devices look like the mobile equivalent of cave painting. QWERTY is dead; long live the touchscreen. As hot as… The Human Torch’s underpants

14 / www.stuff.tv HOT STUFF

10/11

Hands-on with the Torch 9860 by Mark Wilson

BlackBerry’s first stab at a touchscreen-only phone, the Storm, was held back by its sluggish OS 5, while the Torch 9800 fixed the problem inelegantly by sticking a keyboard on the back. Its successor, the Torch 9860, feels much more like a modern touch-phone, with a 1.2GHz processor and ‘Liquid Graphics’ (a fancy term for graphical acceleration) creating a slick, responsive experience. The 9860 doesn’t feel as premium as its high-end rivals or Blackberry’s ownBold 9900 (see p79) – its casing is more plasticky, in the vein of Samsung’s Galaxy series. But the 3.7in display is crisp and bright, and the web browsing experience is vastly improved.

1

Power to the people BlackBerrys aren’t renowned for their raw power, but with more pixels to push and more apps to run, the 9860 has been fitted with a 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor.

2

Balancing act BlackBerry Balance effectively divides your phone in half, keeping personal content separate and preventing inadvertent sharing of work stuff on social networks.

3

Control freak The 9860 might have lost the QWERTY but it can’t completely ditch the buttons. It still comes with a Bold-style optical trackpad, and navigation and call-answering keys.

www.stuff.tv / 15