AT&T, Sprint, Rogers, Telus, and Bell are all scheduled to pick up RIM’s new full-touchscreen BlackBerry Torch 9850/60, but what about elsewhere in the world? On launch day, Vodafone confirmed they’d be carrying it by way of a little teaser video showing the ropes of the device.
The Torch 9860 (or 9850, for anyone picking up the CDMA version on this side of the pond), has the biggest screen we’ve seen on a BlackBerry to date, measuring 3.7 inches, and packing an 800 x 480 display resolution. That’s more or less standard in the world of high-end smartphones, but nonetheless, everything runs super-smoothly thanks to a 1.2 GHz processor, 768 MB of RAM, and new GPU-accelerated rendering through what RIM is calling Liquid Graphics. The 5 megapixel camera gets 720p video recording now, but some more advanced features, like NFC, DLNA, and mobile hotspot remain conspicuously absent.
Back over here, we’re still not sure if T-Mobile will be picking this one up, but between the FCC filing including AWS bands and the pending AT&T acquisition, I wouldn’t worry about it coming sooner or later. Verizon seems like a safe bet for a BlackBerry 9850 launch, despite the lack of any announcements. Aside from being pretty cozy with Vodafone, Verizon-branded versions of the unit have been spotted.
Of the whole bunch of OS 7 phones, I’m still leaning towards the BlackBerry Bold 9900, but they’re all pretty sharp, and the bigger screen on the 9860 may be perfect for folks who have become accustomed to giant screens. Here’s the video, in any case. Any of you Brits tempted?
[via BlackBerry Empire]