This time, RIM is ready to bring the competition to the iPhone and Android phones with its touch screen smart phone called Blackberry 9850
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Design
By looking at the whole design of this phone, it looks gorgeous and impressive. Without the physical QWERTY keyboard that we usually see on any Blackberry series, this phone will still be a hot product in the market
.Blackberry 9850 comes with full touch screen. The absence of QWERTY keyboard on the front side really gives the area of improvement for the screen. Blackberry 9850 is designed in plastic material on the whole case cover and there is also the metallic material on some area in the back cover, specifically on the battery opener.
- Type: Blackberry 9850 Torch
- Release Date: 2011, August
- Price Purchased: $262.49
- Vendor: Research in Motion
Readers' Score
NextPhones4u Score
Phone Specs: TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors, 480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches, 5 MP Camera, Wi-Fi, BlackBerry OS 7, Java MIDP 2.1, 1.2 GHz Scorpion processor, 4 GB Internal storage, microSD card slot (up to 32GB), See Full specs.
- Pros
- Classy and sophisticated design | Good and smooth performance |Blackberry Messenger version 6 |The supports for GSM and CDMA |Blackberry OS 7 | The touch screen is really responsive
- Cons
- It’s pretty expensive | No support of NFC
- Bottomline
- Bottom line, this phone has an impressive and attractive design for sure. And the performance of this phone is just perfect, especially with the support of the latest operation system of Blackberry OS7.
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| Blackberry 9850 |
On the front side, as I mentioned earlier, wide touch screen dominates the whole side of front device. Below the screen, there are 4 physical keys (Call, menu, back and end buttons). It kind of reminds me with the design of Android phones. The 3.5mm headphone jack, volume rocker, micro USB port can be found on the left side, while the lock button is placed on the top. Overall, this phone looks really elegant and sophisticated.
Interface and Functionality
Bringing wide touch screen is also followed by a good impression on the user interface. The screen of 3.7 inches of this phone is still bigger than iPhone 3.5 inch screen. With the support of 16M colors and 480x800 pixels (-252 pixel per inch), the screen looks much brighter and the level of contrast of the screen is just perfect. The TFT capacitive touch screen is really responsive to use and the graphics can be presented perfectly on the screen.
Interface looks great and attractive. The main menu is well integrated with the homescreen, so controlling the user interface is really pleasing. Besides the main panel called “All”, there are also 4 extra panels (Favorites, Downloads, Frequent and Media) that can be found on the bottom position of the screen.
Performance
Blackberry 9850 comes with the latest operating system from this vendor, Blackberry OS 7. The good thing is that the users that are already familiar with previous OS 6 can still adapt easily with the OS 7 version.
Camera
The camera on this phone also gets the special treatment from the vendor. It proved that with the support of 5MP camera, taking pictures with this phone is really pleasing. The wide screen also helps in getting much better quality photos. In the camera interface, there are 11 options of presets in the scene mode that can also help you make great photos with this phone.
The quality of photos on this phone itself can be considered as much better than on the predecessors. Picture looks much sharper and the colors that are taken by the camera look naturally presented on the photo. Taking picture at the close range can still deliver good quality photo, even though there is no macro mode feature on this phone.
Recording video with this phone can bring you HD quality videos in output. With the high resolution of HD 720p, video that is taken with this phone looks great. Even though there are many sudden movements when recording the video, the quality is still great, thanks to the image stabilization feature.
Web Browser
Just like other Android touch screen phones out there, browsing internet with this phone is such a great experience for the users. The multi-tabs and pinch-to-zoom features also make it easier to navigate the web browser. The integration of latest JavaScript engine on this phone also helps improve the speed of browsing even better than before. The web browser already supports HTML 5, so practically the web pages can be fully presented on its web browser.
Blackberry Messenger
Just like on the predecessor, the one called Blackberry Messenger can also be found on this phone. Well, of course, Blackberry Messenger is one of the reasons why people bought Blackberry in the first place. With this Blackberry Messenger version 6, users can chat, interact or send files with other friends that also use Blackberry.
Unfortunately, writing text messages in this Blackberry Messenger can be so bothering because Blackberry 9850 doesn’t have physical QWERTY keyboard anymore and will solely count on the touch screen functionality. So users will need to adapt with the virtual QWERTY keyboard to get used with this phone.
Connectivity
One other great thing about this phone is the ability to inject either GSM or CDMA SIM card. So it can surely grasp more phone users in the market. This phone has also supported WiFi and HSDPA, so surfing internet with this phone can a lot of fun, either at your house or on the go.
Multimedia and Entertainment
Watching videos or movies is really comfortable on this phone because the screen looks wide and sharp. So videos that being presented on the screen is really satisfying to see.
Music aspect is also the last thing that deserves to get highlight in this review. The user interface of its music player is also interesting to see. The feature called “Cover Art” will display the thumbnail or album cover of your favorite song that can be slide to the left or right to change to other songs. It kind of reminds of the same interface and cover art feature on iPhone, although on this phone, the cover art looks smaller than on the iPhone.
Conclusion
Bottom line, although the price of Blackberry 9850 can be considered pretty expensive, the quality that comes with this phone is just worth the price. However, for many Blackberry fans that are already familiar with the use of QWERTY keyboard, using touch screen phone can be a pain in the butt and new experience that needs adaptation.
