I would say it depends on your carrier rather than the model of the phone itself. I also have the Torch 9800 and had it bridge to my playbook for quite sometime. I have yet to experience any significant connection issues unless the 3G coverage drops out. I can stream YouTube while on bridge seamlessly. There are times when the browser doesn't seem to load a page properly but I believe it is more of the problem with the browser. Hope this helps
I've used a bridged 8520 with an EDGE network connection successfully. It is a little slower than the 3G from my Bold but very usable when no other connection is available. I'm actually using the bridged 8520 at the moment to login to crackberry via the PlayBook app and it's reasonably quick.
I have a 9650 bridged to my PlayBook and the speed of the bridge browser has increased since the initial release of the PlayBook. It's much much faster now than it was in May, almost as fast as wifi as long as my carrier signal is good. I'm with Sprint, and I get excellent coverage in the areas I frequent
Bold 9000 OS5.0.X
No problems. I keep Bridge on for emails. If I lack access to wifi and need to use anything Internet related, I turn on 3G on my Bold and I suffer no problems.
my power at my house went out a while back, no wifi, so all i had here was my pb and torch 9800, bridge was a life saver. speed was pretty much par with my pc which i use 90% of the time.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpf3YGK66GM[/yt]
I was bridged with the 9530 (storm), it worked ok. I upgraded to the 9860 (torch) and honestly I cannot tell the difference in surfing via bridge, so I would agree that it is your carrier and not just the phone.
I went from the 9800 to the 9810. The 9800 was 3G and the 9810 is 3G+ on the 4G network.
Everything is much faster on the 9810. Web browsing on the playbook through bridge is much faster. I now enjoy web surfing on the phone (the 9800 was slow). Pinch zoom is lag free (excellent). The pages load much faster.
If you need the best experience get an OS7 phone on a 3G+ network
I found my torch is faster than my tour was. Bridge is only slightly slower than tethering for me and it isn't what I would call slow all though I'm sure my carrier has something to do with it also. Definitely not wifi speed but not bad either.
I went from the 9800 to the 9810. The 9800 was 3G and the 9810 is 3G+ on the 4G network.
Everything is much faster on the 9810. Web browsing on the playbook through bridge is much faster. I now enjoy web surfing on the phone (the 9800 was slow). Pinch zoom is lag free (excellent). The pages load much faster.
If you need the best experience get an OS7 phone on a 3G+ network