chemicle

August 04, 2010 at 12:40am

I'm sure there are the Blackberry lovers out there, and that's fine.  In many ways, they have their place in the cell phone market.  I do find however that the introduction of this phone at this point in time is a simple case of "too little too late".  To offer this type of phone at the price point their asking is a bit of a slap in the face to consumers considering the capabilities of some of it's competitors.  The screen resolution for instance is WAY lower than that of the new iPhone.  It also comes with 4 Gig of Flash memory as opposed to the new iPhone's 16? 

Seems to me that there is a major gap in what the devices have for the price point.  

Blackberry needed to step up and wow the industry with a new product.  They haven't done it here.  They are a major player in the Smart Phone industry who have reached saturation with their products.  And yes, very good products up to now.  But with new Android and iPhone's wowing the consumers, and Nielsen's findings that 57% of their customers looking to jump ship "for something new".  This product is what BB needed 3 years ago.  Not now.  Good Luck RIM. Mark my words - your days are numbered unless you come up with something more technologically savvy.  Thank goodness many businesses and IT departments are slow to adapt new technology - it will stave off the inevitable.  

One more product that will NOT be the apparently fabled "iPhone Killer".   

zaternine

August 03, 2010 at 10:28pm

OMG I WANT ONE. i heard about this phone a while ago. i hope it comes out for tmo very soon. i have the 8520 now, its not the greatest and fastest, and its not 3g but i enjoy using a blackberry and its layout. this has all the upgrades i want. touch and slider with 3g. 

BasiliskSt

August 03, 2010 at 2:26pm

The new Blackberry Torch with Blackberry 6.0 is a necessary step back into the consumer smart phone market. The hardware looks good and the wi-fi media synch is a nice, unique feature. However, the Torch would be a more compelling candidate with a higher resolution screen and faster processor. Consumers trained to compare between the Evo 4G and the iPhone 4 (at similar prices) are going to be disappointed by the lower resolution, slower processor of the Torch. The price will have to be adjusted to reflect the technical disadvantages. Blackberry needs a compelling argument to win back consumer purchase intentions. If the hardware technology isn't quite first tier the price has to come down to improve the bang for the buck argument. (Ask Palm.) Some of the touchscreen gestures sound like the Palm webOS. Like the Android G1, the Torch suggests waiting because the pieces are all available, but not yet incorporated in the first phone of the new OS. Bigger, better, faster, higher resolution offerings on more networks should come eventually. Not sure that Torch makes a compelling case on the AT&T network to experiment with the first offering of the new Blackberry 6.0 OS. Blackberry did one thing very well. It kept enough of the familiar to not alienate Blackberry lovers. The question is whether it made enough changes to keep hearts from wandering to the eye candy of competing smart phone operating systems in more powerful skins.