It's nearing Christmas time and time for gifts! What better way than to gift a smartphone. A Blackberry would be great. One of the latest in the Blackberry stables is the BLACKBERRY-Torch-9800. Give it to someone you love or respect or wish to impress upon. The Blackberry Torch would have an impact. It's feature-rich and sophisticated.

It has both touch screen and the familiar QWERTY keypad on board. It may be slightly on the bulky side but then it compensates with functionality. It's a slider type phone and when closed its dimensions are Height- 111mm; Width- 62mm; Depth- 14.6mm and weighs 161gm.

Shooting with the 5MP camera is simple enough as it has image stabilization and 11 photo modes with video recording too. This smart mobile phone has 8 GB of memory and expandable up to 32 GB with a microSD card. It has an optical track-pad and Proximity sensor. The microprocessor is enough but can be better to enhance performance.

On the face is the 3.2inch capacitive touch-screen is responsive and has an on screen QWERTY keyboard which is good. The 3.2" HVGA+ 480x360 pixel colour display is actually sufficient. Competitors are improving constantly on display resolution. On the touchscreen pinch to zoom out and expand with two fingers to zoom in. This phone runs on icon centric BlackBerry 6 OS, which has better features to manage multiple websites, bookmark favourite sites and helps tabbed browsing. The user can gather and filter social networks and RSS feeds in one hub and update all with a single post. It's easy to run Facebook, Twitter, Tube Buddy, Paypal or Google Apps or chat clients. SMS, MMS, Email and instant messaging are supported. It features a full featured music player. Flick or scroll over to left or right . The UI is friendly with interesting graphics and customisable. It features GPS with BlackBerry Maps. The Torch has BlackBerry's enterprise tools - including the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and can access BlackBerry App World 2.0. which is very helpful to users who have upgraded and corporate personnel.

The 1300 mAHr removable/rechargeable lithium-ion battery on the phone gives Talk time up to 5.5 hours; Standby time up to 17 days/408 hours on GSM or up to 13 days/312 hours on UMTS. Music playback is up to 27 hours and Video playback is up to 5.7 hours. It has tethered modem capability. Enabled with G HSDPA and with GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, this phone will stay you connected.

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