Reviewed in Smart Developer Magazine by Marcel Gagné

Could this be the best BlackBerry yet?  The Torch heralds a departure for RIM and sets the foundation for bigger, better, and more exciting things in the near future.

For the last few days, I’ve been using the new BlackBerry Torch, also known as the 9800 smartphone, and now, as I prepare to share my findings with you, I am struck by how strange it is to review a cellular phone in the latter part of 2010. It used to be that a cellular phone was a communication device, meant to let you talk to other people – much like the phone in your home. These days, you can’t review one of these things without considering a host of functions that represent not one, but several devices.

When you talk about a smartphone, you ask questions about its megapixel count and whether it has a built-in flash or not. What kind of resolution does the screen have, and how does the browser stack up in terms of speed and rendering ability? Does the phone have a touchscreen, and can you pinch and zoom into those web pages? What about social media and integration with popular social networking sites? How many hundreds of songs can I store and play? Does the phone make a good mini-television for viewing streaming video content? What about the GPS, the keyboard, and a hundred other things you never worried about with a phone a decade ago? Can it still make phone calls?

Read the full article as PDF here.