Windows mobile in Japan

Many amid the digerati abolish the BlackBerry as a annoyed balance of yesterday’s technology. And its maker, Research In Motion (RIMM), generally gets lumped with Microsoft (MSFT) and Nokia (NOK) as wireless antecedents who blown aboriginal advantages and are biconcave against irrelevance. The BlackBerry Torch 9800, which went on auction in the U.S. on Aug. 12, is RIM’s best recent accomplishment to acknowledgment the charge.

The Torch—which will amount $199 with a two-year AT&T (T) contract—is the aboriginal BlackBerry to amalgamate its brand concrete keyboard with a touchscreen and the aboriginal to run a fresh operating system, BlackBerry 6. By and ample it should accomplish in befitting RIM loyalists satisfied. It may additionally address to those who accept yet to accomplish the move from added bound devices, admitting it doesn’t accommodate users of aggressive smartphones with a acute acumen to switch.

There’s no mistaking the Torch for annihilation but a BlackBerry. It has that archetypal appearance and, unfortunately, heft: It weighs about 5.7 ounces, authoritative it about 18 percent added than an iPhone 4. That’s abundantly because of the keyboard, which slides out from abaft the 3.2-inch screen.

After some agitation ambience up the Torch to assignment with my e-mail system—the buzz froze alert while configuring itself—it assuredly took. From again on it functioned smoothly, accouterment the aforementioned abiding and defended e-mail and messaging casework that accept fabricated BlackBerry so admired by accumulated IT departments—and so alarming to governments like those of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which accept threatened to ban or bind them unless RIM makes it easier to adviser encrypted transmissions.

The interface provided by the fresh operating system, which will additionally be accessible to users of BlackBerry’s Bold 9700 and 9650 and Pearl 3G models, is apple-pie and intuitive. The home awning is able-bodied laid out, with a abstracted awning for frequently acclimated applications. Settings and options accept been fabricated simpler beyond the board. The more acceptable advance is in surfing the Web: RIM has absolutely revamped the browser, which is now abundant faster, toggles added calmly amid windows, and is more acceptable at administration RSS feeds. You can use now-familiar pinch-and-zoom gestures to resize argument and images on the screen.

The Torch lacks the élan of the iPhone 4 or Motorola’s Droid X. Its appliance abundance has alone about 9,000 items, a baby atom of the cardinal accessible for Apple’s (AAPL) phones or for Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, and its baby awning and computer application absolute its media-playing appeal. Still, BlackBerry enjoys some of the best amorous admirers this ancillary of Steve Jobs, and the Torch provides them with a acceptable acumen to stick around.