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“Close, but no cigar”

written by hotxbun on 22/06/2012

I've been a Blackberry customer for the last 5 years and had my Torch 9800 for just over a year. Firtly I think the only thing that saves this model is the fact that it is a Blackberry and email just works. It syncs well with all my accounts and works seamlessly, however, that is the same across all models. The biggest let down is the speed and responsiveness - after a year the touch-screen seems to lag and occasionally pauses for a few seconds before it works out what to do.

From a design perspective I get the feeling it can't really decide whether it is a touch-screen or a keypad phone. Blackberry would argue that it is both - I would argue that it does neither as well as a dedicated touch-screen or keypad device. It is very slow when using multi-touch gestures like pinch zooming or even swiping and if you flick to using the keypad the bevel at the bottom gets in the way of you pressing the buttons.

I am still an avid Blackberry fan and will continue to use Blackberry as the email capabilities are second to none - but this device seems to be moving away from what Blackberry does best (business smartphones) and tries to compete with the iPhone but with only a fraction of the development time/cost.

I am interested in the new Blackberry Bold 9900 - maybe they have managed to sort out the dual personality issues on this one and increased the responsiveness.