[NEW GADGET] After the Olympic torch, Singapore is set to officially welcome the next torch; Blackberry Torch 9800. But it seems as though the interest for the latter won’t be as high as the former.
SingTel has begun to accept pre-orders for the RIM’s latest phone, its first slider cum touch screen phone. The Singapore’s oldest Telco has offered to sweeten the pre-order deal with S$50 off the handset price with a limited edition backcover.
A Blackberry with physical potrait keyboard plus capacitive touch screen sounds like a winning formula. Yet, it has been a few months since RIM officially launched the device in United States and the reviews during this period hasn’t been that favourably to be honest.
In essential, the sentiment hovers around Blackberry Torch 9800 to be a step in a good direction. It has got Blackberry OS 6, the latest from the company. And in it, is a brand new web-kit browser which has been a remarkably improvement from the old time favourites of the Blackberry Bold series. To top it off, Blackberry Torch’s outer hardware is still as brilliant as ever.
BUT, the latest OS is still not comparably against the competition in terms of speed and usability. So is it’s application store. And it’s screen resolution is in the range of being called “low res”.
Specifications:
- TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
- Multi-touch input method
- 4 GB storage, 512 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
- 5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
- 624 MHz processor
Hit the links below to see the extensive reviews of the Blackberry Torch 9800.
For me, from the Singapore’s market perspective, I think Torch 9800 is probably going to do fairly well. The reason being despite the fact that the iPhones and Android phones outperformance, Blackberry still has a rather good following in Singapore even excluding the business segment of the market. And based on this, I think Singaporeans will continue to flavour Blackberry’s superb keyboard, business class outlook and not forgetting its Blackberry messenger.
I mean Blackberry Torch is not a superhero but it does not mean that it is a villain.
Review – Engadget
Review - Slashgear
Pre-order Page - SingTel
