First Look review: The BlackBerry Torch 9850 and Bold 9930

Two of the first of five recently announced phones to run the new BlackBerry 7 operating system, the BlackBerry Torch 9850 ($150, Sprint) and BlackBerry Bold 9930 ($250, Verizon), have now arrived. BlackBerry 7 promises smoother Web-based videos and better performance for personal e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, games, and other apps previously hampered by enterprise-security-motivated restrictions.

Having had the chance to use both new phones, I found the upgraded hardware more impressive than the OS tweaks. Both phones have dazzlingly bright and sharp touch screens for more direct access to applications, while buttressing their navigation options with the traditional BlackBerry buttons and trackpads.

The Torch ditches the traditional slide-out keyboard for a larger 3.7-inch display, while the Bold has a more modest 2.8-inch screen sitting on top of what RIM says is its thinnest design and widest QWERTY keyboard. The Bold measures 4.53 x 0.60 x 0.41 inches and weighs 4.6 ounces

The Bold also supports NFC (near-field communication), which may one day enable shoppers to pay for items by waving their smart phones in front of a register. Both of these CDMA phones have 1.2GHz processors and 5-megapixel cameras, and both can be used on international GSM networks.

The details:

OS improvements. Most of the differences between the BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7 operating systems are subtle, almost imperceptible. The preloaded Facebook and Twitter apps are unremarkable, and the interface of the Social Feed app that integrates them seems a generation or two behind its Android and iPhone counterparts. More significant app improvements may come later as software developers dive into BlackBerry 7's less-restrictive design options.

I did, however, notice that the menus seemed a bit "smarter." For example, when you make a change to an application and hit the Menu key, the Save option is preselected. But video smoothing aside (see below), the biggest bonus of all may be that you can now edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files right out of the box with DataViz Docs To Go Premium suite, which used to be a $30 download option.

Display. The displays of these phones are simply superb. App icons seem to pop against the desktop's black background. I found the displays more than bright enough to use the phones in bright sunlight and to read onscreen maps when the phones were mounted on my windshield for GPS navigation. Also, videos streamed on YouTube seemed noticeably smoother on these 3G phones than on earlier BlackBerry models.

But the most striking improvement was in touch-screen responsiveness: There's almost no lag time when launching or switching between applications, summoning menu options, or using the pinch-to-zoom to resize Web content and photos. RIM credits this performance to a technology it calls Liquid Graphics. I'll be very interested in seeing how well this works on the 4G T-Mobile BlackBerry models we'll soon have in our labs.

Data entry. It's hard to beat a physical keyboard when it comes to typing, and the keyboard on the new Bold is one of the best I've tried. The keys are well spaced and raised, making it hard to flub words. The highly responsive touch and conventional BlackBerry navigation keys and optical touchpad make things that much better.

The Torch, of course, lacks a real keyboard. And, unfortunately, I found the keys on its virtual keyboard a tad too small for typing accurately, especially in portrait mode. You have the option to switch to a condensed keyboard that puts two letters on larger keys, but I found that even more confusing than hitting the smaller keys of the full keyboard. (This phone is a serious candidate for a Swype keyboard option.) On the bright side, the virtual keypad has some of the biggest buttons I've ever seen, a real plus for dialing phone numbers in a hurry.

Bottom line: While it's safe to say these BlackBerries are noticeably improved over their predecessors, they may not yet have what it takes to dethrone our top-rated Android models, which often have larger displays, access to faster 4G networks, and higher-resolution cameras, including front-facing ones that enable video chats. We'll have the definitive word once Consumer Reports testers complete their evaluation of these models and add them to our phone Ratings (available to subscribers).

The BlackBerry Torch 9850

—Mike Gikas