The official I got my 9850/9860 thread

[BB.David]

Originally Posted by SBerryTour

I was reluctant to give up my BB keyboard. However, I can't accept the 9900's non AF camera due to poor close ups and I think the larger screen on the 9850 is a big plus. These are the two main reasons I chose the Torch after much internal debate.

The 9850/60 don't have the AF camera either.

[Sparro]

Originally Posted by BB.David

The 9850/60 don't have the AF camera either.

Yes they do!!!
Do a little research before you post dis-information. The 9900/9930 is the only new device without auto focus.
Auto focus was scrapped on the 9900/9930 to keep its slim profile.

[InnerChild]

Originally Posted by BB.David

The 9850/60 don't have the AF camera either.

The BB website says the 9860/50 has autofocus with 4x zoom. My Storm1 has 2x zoom.

[prithvi64]

Waiting for 9860 to be released in India! After using Storm1, Storm2 and torch 9800, now target to have 9860. Loving suretype keypad typing, main reason for sticking with touch phones of blackberry. Other touch phones like iphone, SG S2 sucks on typing in portrait.

[SaMaster14]

Pictures of this device really do look awesome!

Anyone have screenshots yet?

I must say that I love my Bold 9930, but as soon as this hits the Verizon stores I'm definitely going to go in and have a look (and of course mess around with the device a bit)!

[BB.David]

Originally Posted by Sparro

Yes they do!!!
Do a little research before you post dis-information. The 9900/9930 is the only new device without auto focus.
Auto focus was scrapped on the 9900/9930 to keep its slim profile.

Oops! You are right, I was assumed all BlackBerry 7 devices omitted the AF camera. My mistake.

[pjcloninger]

Originally Posted by scubakurley

Picked my Torch up yesterday afternoon. By the way it was a touch choice with the 9930--that thing is sweet--looks fantastic and amazingly light yet solid. Desktop Manager made the transition easy--only have to re-invite my BBM contacts. Quick points on the device after moderate use--say 6 hours of total actual use.

Love the screen and picked up the very nice BB soft shell that Kevin showed from fan nite--see pics. The responsiveness to touch is good, little gimmicky on the web when selecting links: a quick touch may work but not always and then holding to get the options such as Open Link does work--nice options when holding to share the link and other actions--well thought out.

Learning quickly with the virtual keyboard--biggest issue is the size of the 'keys' which is difficult to change and my wide thumbs. The auto-correct and predictive text does seem a hair slow but is very functional. I do not have a ton of experience outside of the playbook with virtual keyboards so can't compare to iOS, Android et. al.

Only a couple of small gripes: when surfing the virtual keyboard is missing the '.com' button on the Playbook--that would be nice to have--we get spoiled quickly don't we?

Battery life appears like it will be very good. After about 3 hours of moderate web and BBM use on 3G with a full charge I am down to 80%--so about 15 hours if averaged out. So ought to be good after things settle out.

I will try to go through a detail review after a couple days of use. So far a happy camper and think RIM has a good starting effort.

Where did you get your soft shell case?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[ups925]

got mine on Monday. I walked into bestbuy and they sold 4 of them to 3 different groups of people during the time i was waiting to speak with a cellphone rep. I was shocked because the bestbuy guys all laughed when I tried to reserve a playbook, then were shocked when I came to buy it on launch day. Apparently word has really gotten out in my area about the new bb devices. I got the last one they had and really like it so far. The battery pull restart time is only about 30 seconds! Much better than a solid minute or two on my tour or style.

[PJD642]

For those with the 9850/60s, how does the vibrate strength compare to your previous BB? I keep my 9650 on vibrate in my shirt pocket at work (over several layers of kevlar) and wish it buzzed a little more emphatically sometimes. I've missed calls & texts because I've been out walking and not felt the vibrations.

[pjcloninger]

Originally Posted by PJD642

For those with the 9850/60s, how does the vibrate strength compare to your previous BB? I keep my 9650 on vibrate in my shirt pocket at work (over several layers of kevlar) and wish it buzzed a little more emphatically sometimes. I've missed calls & texts because I've been out walking and not felt the vibrations.

Vibrate strength appears to be better than my Tour, IMO.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[gwentravotla]

Just got my 9850 torch via sprint last night after my 9630 tour took a dive off a roller coaster.

at first i was really worried that i wouldn't adjust to the small screen. Being only 3.7" compared to the 4.3" of the evo, i thought id be mashing too many letters to make texting easy. However, the phones ability to correct the mistakes made by my oversized fingers is amazing. I'm typing just as fast as i did on my tour's real keyboard.

The screen, though smaller, is beautiful. Colors look great on it and the touch screen feels very responsive. The new OS is pretty sick. getting to everything is easy with the favourites tab, and everything runs super fast compared to my old BB. I'm really liking the wifi feature i didn't have on my tour as well.

One concern i had with blackberries is that they dont seem to work too well when the signal is subpar. the screen shows the little waiting clock thing a lot whenever im trying to do anything. However, the torch (and the new os) seems to have fixed that problem. I'm really glad that RIM is shaping up after their failure of a touch screen phone - the storm.

Overall, I love this phone. They seem to have made a lot of improvements and still kept it super functional without draining the battery or making it oversized. Take that, evo.

[dredewten85]

I received mine tuesday. The screen is great, the device is light, the keyboard is great even though it is small (autocorrect really helps), and it is fast. I thought as soon as I got it I would take it back and get the bold but after having it for a while its a keeper.

[pjcloninger]

Launch day 9850

[jake_f]

Got my hands on a 9860 yesterday. The transition was flawless except some "Quick contacts" that were not transferred (don't know what it is though...so I don't seem to miss them) and below are my first impressions:

+ Great screen, fast and snappy in most situations (see below), keyboard OK and I think I will learn to like it (matter of taste) and it is almost as good as the iPhone in picking the right letters (just almost though...), light (especially compared to my 9800 slider...)

- Now and then the "timeglass", that clock indicating som processing...
- Quite often freezes in the web browser
- That really annoying thing with the keyboard that Playbook has: On pages that hasn't loaded 100% or reloading stuff within them, the keyboard just disappears all the time...
- The battery cover not 100% stick to the chassi. Already now there's like a millimeter gap, will collect dust and stuff for sure
- Multitouch zoom in and out at all screens, browsing, messages, calendar etc. is not there. Multitouch zoom at web pages sometimes work sometimes not and it is often freezing and you need to re-try.
- The resolution of videos, good to be able to record HD of course but next "levels", "Normal (480x640)" delivers significant bigger video files than the Torch 9800 does. Made a small test: 27 seconds in the same format gives a file of 5,7MB on 9800 and 23,3MB on the new 9860! Of course the video quality is (slightly) better viewed on my laptop but this is how I see the video camera on the BB: If I want to really record something and store it I would use the "HD" mode but "Normal" mode to be able to record and then email or share on Whatsapp or similar fast and directly. That's not possible since the file fast gets this big. (The lowest mode "MMS" is not worth mentioning since some additional compresseion makes the quality useless but of course a very small file.

OK, that was the first impressions, would have expected more out of the new OS and device I must say. Everyone here talks about QNX and OK that sounds promising and is a "must" I think if RIM shall succeed in winning new market shares.

[djdonnyk]

I have had mine since the 22nd and so far I love it, here are my thoughts on my first ever touchscreen:

First off I've had several different models since my first BB in 2003 and after all my friends dogging me about how "out of date" RIM devices are they have been good to me over the years. I am glad I was patient with RIM and waited for this sweet device.

Pros:

1. When I installed the battery after activation swap, it only took about 3 minutes to boot up and connect with 3G network. I thought this was amazing considering past devices took about 5-6 minutes.

2. Display is amazing compared to any previous devices to date.

3. This device is thin and light but fits in my hand like a glove. It's very comfortable to hold when composing messages.

4. Battery life in the 4 days since activated has been very good in my opinion. I get about 10 hours, my Style only got about 6 hours. I am defintely getting a spare with stand alone charger as I am a heavy user somedays.

5. Video recording is amazing on this device, I uploaded a test to my computer and it has very good resolution.

6. The virtual keyboard works well in portrait or landscape, it didn't take me to long to adjust to the touchscreen. I thought it would be very hard to type on but I was very surprised.

7. The curves and edges on this device are very sexy and comfortable compared to the Storm versions in my opinion.

8. The speed on this device is so much faster than my Style, I was downloading 3 apps at once and they where going very quickly.

Cons:

1. The first thing that I noticed was the portrait to landscape mode is tricky and lags a bit. I found the trick is when you hold the device straight up and down it switches almost instantly.

2. If I don't press the lock button on top before I holster in my BB horizontal leather case it changes to landscape mode.

3. I feel the speaker phone isn't as good as my Style was but what do we expect from a much thinner device.

4. The first device I received had a drastically crooked trackpad so I had to swap it out for another, but that happens to some of us.

Conclusion:

No device is perfect but I feel that RIM did a great job on this one and it's a great device. Can't wait to put it up against my 2 brother in laws I-Phones and see who is the champion, I think this device is a contender for sure.