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Lost in all the talk about iPhone 4 and a slew of slick Android devices released in the last cou­ple of months has been Black­Berry. That lit­tle work­horse pro­duced by RIM, often referred to as the “Crackb­Berry,” because its users are a bit obses­sive, has been slowly los­ing ground to the iPhone and Android devices–even in the cor­po­rate envi­ron­ment. One of the pri­mary rea­sons Black­Ber­ries have been los­ing favor is the ter­ri­ble web browser. Com­par­ing the web brows­ing expe­ri­ence on the Black­Berry to iPhones and Android devices is like com­par­ing a Ford to a Fer­rari. Cana­dian tech blog­ger, Mark Evans, posted an inter­est­ing piece on this issue yes­ter­day. Click here to read his thoughts.

Appar­ently, RIM has heard the cries and cou­ples the intro­duc­tion of its new Black­berry 6 oper­at­ing sys­tem (OS) with the launch of it’s lat­est device…The Torch.

Based on sneak peek video I’ve seen, the user inter­face with Black­Berry 6 OS and the Torch is pretty good. I’ve used a Black­Berry Storm, and can tell you that RIM has a lot of ground to make up with its touch­screen expe­ri­ence. I sus­pect, the idea of a touch­screen device with a slider is in direct response to the nearly whole­sale rejec­tion of the Storm and Storm 2. Peo­ple who are heavy typ­ists on the go, pre­fer the phys­i­cal key­board. Black­Berry, arguably, makes the best key­board on a mobile device. We’ll see how all this plays out as the Torch gets into people’s hands for real-world use. In the mean­time, here is AT&T’s press release, which includes pric­ing information.

AT&T and Research In Motion Ignite Cus­tomers With The New Black­Berry Torch­Press Release Title

Black­Berry Torch Smart­phone First to Fea­ture New Black­Berry 6

Com­bines New Touch Screen Expe­ri­ence with Easy-To-Use Key­board and Rich WebKit Browser

First Smart­phone to Sup­port AT&T’s Next Gen­er­a­tion Mes­sag­ing Expe­ri­ence, and First to Offer Loca­tions Feature 
DALLAS, TEXAS and WATERLOO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Aug. 3, 2010) -

Join­ing forces to offer the first smart­phone to fea­ture the highly antic­i­pated Black­Berry® 6 exclu­sively on the nation’s fastest mobile broad­band net­work, AT&T* (NYSE:T) and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM) today intro­duced the new Black­Berry® Torch™ 9800 smart­phone. Adept for socially con­nected con­sumers and packed with the tools busi­ness cus­tomers love, the new hand­set is the world’s first smart­phone to com­bine a Black­Berry® key­board with a full touch screen expe­ri­ence. Whether users choose to type out mes­sages on the capac­i­tive touch screen or easy-to-use Black­Berry key­board, browse the Inter­net using pinch to zoom or flu­idly nav­i­gate with the opti­cal track­pad, the Black­Berry Torch allows them to com­mu­ni­cate any way they want.

“We were the first to launch the Black­Berry solu­tion in 1999 and have a rich his­tory of inno­va­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with Research In Motion,” said Ralph de la Vega, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer, AT&T Mobil­ity and Con­sumer Mar­kets. “The two com­pa­nies that brought the first Black­Berry smart­phones to mar­ket have teamed up again with the new Black­Berry Torch, cre­at­ing a true gen­er­a­tional shift in hard­ware and oper­at­ing sys­tem for this enor­mously pop­u­lar service.”

“This is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant launches in RIM’s his­tory and we are proud to intro­duce the new Black­Berry Torch and Black­Berry 6 together with AT&T,” said Mike Lazaridis, pres­i­dent and co-ceo, Research In Motion. “With a new user inter­face, new browser and new hand­set design, the highly antic­i­pated Black­Berry Torch and Black­Berry 6 deliver inte­grated and uncom­pro­mis­ing capa­bil­i­ties for con­sumers and busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als that pre­serve the industry-leading strengths of the Black­Berry plat­form while adding excit­ing new dimensions.”

Black­Berry 6

The Black­Berry Torch is the first Black­Berry smart­phone to launch with Black­Berry 6, a new oper­at­ing sys­tem that retains the famil­iar and trusted fea­tures that dis­tin­guish the Black­Berry brand while deliv­er­ing a fresh, approach­able and engag­ing expe­ri­ence that’s pow­er­ful and easy to use.

Black­Berry 6 fea­tures a redesigned inter­face that seam­lessly works with the touch screen and track­pad, includes expanded mes­sag­ing capa­bil­i­ties with intu­itive fea­tures to sim­plify the man­age­ment of social net­work­ing and RSS feeds (Social Feeds), and pro­vides inte­grated access to the Black­Berry® Mes­sen­ger (BBM™), Face­book®, Twit­ter™, MySpace™ and var­i­ous instant mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions avail­able on the Black­Berry Torch smart­phone. Its enhanced mul­ti­me­dia expe­ri­ence rivals the best in the indus­try and includes a ded­i­cated YouTube app and Pod­casts app.

Black­Berry 6 also inte­grates a new and rich WebKit-based browser on Black­Berry Torch that ren­ders HTML web pages (as well as HTML email) quickly and beau­ti­fully for a great brows­ing expe­ri­ence. It fea­tures tabs for access­ing mul­ti­ple sites simul­ta­ne­ously, pinch to zoom for easy nav­i­ga­tion and an auto-wrap text zoom fea­ture that can intel­li­gently wrap text in a col­umn while main­tain­ing the place­ment of a page’s key ele­ments (sim­ply double-tap on the Black­Berry Torch).

Uni­ver­sal search, always acces­si­ble from the Home Screen, allows users to search through email, mes­sages, con­tacts, music, videos and more on the smart­phone, as well as extend search to the Inter­net or to dis­cover appli­ca­tions on Black­Berry App World™.

Advanced Mes­sag­ing

Mes­sag­ing has always been a core ele­ment of the Black­Berry smart­phone expe­ri­ence and the Black­Berry Torch smart­phone expands on RIM’s pop­u­lar mes­sag­ing solu­tions with the sup­port of AT&T’s advanced mes­sag­ing fea­tures for SMS and MMS. RIM’s new Text Mes­sages appli­ca­tion is espe­cially excit­ing for users who com­mu­ni­cate most via SMS and MMS, pro­vid­ing sup­port for AT&T’s next-generation mes­sag­ing expe­ri­ence, which includes group mes­sag­ing with “reply all” func­tion­al­ity for up to 10 con­tacts. And for the first time, AT&T’s plat­form includes a new Loca­tions feature.

Loca­tions lets users eas­ily search for points of inter­est, busi­nesses, and even the user’s own loca­tion, and insert this infor­ma­tion directly into a mes­sage, all with­out leav­ing the mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tion. Using group mes­sag­ing and loca­tions together, users can arrange to meet a group of friends eas­ily
by send­ing one mes­sage to all of them, dis­cussing together where to meet and then send­ing a map – all in one threaded con­ver­sa­tion. AT&T designed the ser­vice based on research that revealed cus­tomers want fea­tures that help facil­i­tate social plan­ning, improved mes­sage orga­ni­za­tion and loca­tion sharing.

Apps At Your Fingertips

After pow­er­ing up the Black­Berry Torch smart­phone for the first time, users will notice a set of pre-loaded icons which allow them to down­load and imme­di­ately begin using a vari­ety of rich enter­tain­ment and social net­work­ing appli­ca­tions to access Bloomberg, ESPN, The Weather Chan­nel and Slacker Radio con­tent in addi­tion to Face­book, MySpace, Twit­ter and more. Also avail­able is AT&T’s Web Video Search, a unique new app that searches video con­tent from over 70 major Inter­net video websites.

In addi­tion to search­ing the Inter­net for video, the Black­Berry Torch smart­phone also fea­tures more mul­ti­me­dia apps that let users down­load TV shows and watch live TV, as well as cre­ate video con­tent and upload it to YouTube. The new Pod­casts appli­ca­tion makes it easy for users to find and man­age audio and video podcasts.

Another appli­ca­tion that puts a key func­tion of a phone at your fin­ger­tips is Visual Voice­mail, which ben­e­fits cus­tomers by allow­ing them to select the voice­mails they want to hear first.

The Black­Berry Torch 9800 is also the first Black­Berry smart­phone to include Black­Berry App World™ pre-installed, sup­port­ing car­rier billing through AT&T, mak­ing it eas­ier for cus­tomers to dis­cover and pur­chase applications.

Black­Berry Torch Smart­phone Fea­tures

• Ele­gant styling, mea­sur­ing approx. 4.4″ (5.8″ open) x 2.4″ x .57″ and weigh­ing 5.68 ounces
• 3.2″ 360×480 capac­i­tive touch screen display
• 35 key full QWERTY back­lit slide-out key­board, designed to feel opti­mally bal­anced when opened for typing
• Opti­cal track­pad that makes nav­i­ga­tion fast and smooth
• Pow­er­ful 624 Mhz proces­sor with 512 MB Flash memory
• 4 GB built-in mem­ory stor­age plus a microSD/SDHD mem­ory card slot that sup­ports up to 32 GB cards; a 4 GB card is included giv­ing users 8 GB of stor­age out-of-the-box
• 5 MP cam­era with flash, con­tin­u­ous auto focus, image sta­bi­liza­tion, scene modes, geo-tagging and zoom, as well as video record­ing at up to 640×480 resolution
• Built-in GPS for location-based appli­ca­tions and geo-tagging
• Wi-Fi® (802.11 b/g/n); qual­i­fy­ing smart­phone cus­tomers can enjoy seam­less con­nec­tiv­ity to over 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots at no addi­tional cost
• 3.5mm stereo head­set jack
• Pre­mium phone fea­tures, includ­ing voice acti­vated dial­ing, speak­er­phone and Blue­tooth® (2.1) with sup­port for hands-free head­sets, stereo head­sets, car kits (includ­ing sys­tems that sup­port the Blue­tooth Mes­sage Access Pro­file stan­dard) and other Blue­tooth accessories
• New Black­Berry® Desk­top Soft­ware 6 with inte­grated media sync for eas­ily sync­ing music, pho­tos and videos**. It also includes Wi-Fi Music Sync, a unique fea­ture that allows users to view their entire iTunes® or Win­dows Media® Player music libraries from their Black­Berry smart­phone, cre­ate and edit playlists as well as select music for down­load. When in range of their home Wi-Fi net­work (or via USB), the changes are synced with iTunes or Win­dows Media Player and the songs are auto­mat­i­cally down­loaded to the smartphone
• Tri-band HSDPA (3G) and quad-band EDGE sup­port for the option of voice ser­vice in more than 220 coun­tries, data ser­vice in more than 195 coun­tries and 3G con­nec­tiv­ity in more than 125 coun­tries, includ­ing Japan and South Korea
• Remov­able, recharge­able 1300 mAhr bat­tery that pro­vides approx­i­mately 5.8 hours of talk time on 3G net­works or 30 hours of audio play­back or 6 hours of video playback

Pric­ing and Availability

The Black­Berry Torch 9800 smart­phone will be avail­able only for AT&T cus­tomers on August 12 in AT&T com­pany owned retail stores and online at www.att.com/blackberrytorch, as well as Best Buy, Wal-Mart and RadioShack stores.

The Black­Berry Torch 9800 will be avail­able for $199.99 with 2-year ser­vice agree­ment on a qual­i­fy­ing rate plan and smart­phone data plan required. New smart­phone cus­tomers may choose from two AT&T monthly data plan options, $15 for 200 MB of wire­less data or $25 for 2 GB. Enter­prise and small busi­ness cus­tomers should con­tact their account rep­re­sen­ta­tive for pric­ing details.

*AT&T prod­ucts and ser­vices are pro­vided or offered by sub­sidiaries and affil­i­ates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

AT&T imposes: a Reg­u­la­tory Cost Recov­ery Charge of up to $1.25 to help defray costs incurred in com­ply­ing with oblig­a­tions and charges imposed by State and Fed­eral tele­com reg­u­la­tions; State and Fed­eral Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice charges; and sur­charges for gov­ern­ment assess­ments on AT&T. These fees are not taxes or government-required charges.

**Cer­tain music files may not be sup­ported, includ­ing files that con­tain dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment tech­nolo­gies. Photo and video sync­ing is cur­rently only avail­able for Windows-based PCs.

Limited-time offer. Other con­di­tions & restric­tions apply. See con­tract & rate plan brochure for details. Sub­scriber must live & have a mail­ing addr. within AT&T’s owned wire­less net­work cov­er­age area. Up to $36 activ. fee applies. Equip­ment price & avail may vary by mrk & may not be avail­able from inde­pen­dent retail­ers. Early Ter­mi­na­tion Fee: None if can­celled in the first 30 days, but up to $35 restock­ing fee may apply to equip­ment returns; there­after up to $325. Some agents impose add’l fees. Unlim­ited voice ser­vices: Unltd voice svcs are pro­vided pri­mar­ily for live dia­log between two indi­vid­u­als. No addi­tional dis­counts are avail­able with unlim­ited plan. Smart­phone Data Plan Require­ment: Smart­phones require a Dat­a­Plus (200MB) or Dat­aPro (2GB) plan. If you exceed your ini­tial data allowance, you will auto­mat­i­cally be charged an addi­tional $10 for each addi­tional 1GB pro­vided on Dat­aPro or an addi­tional $15 for each addi­tional 200MB pro­vided on Dat­a­Plus. All data allowances, includ­ing over­ages, must be used in the billing period in which the allowance is pro­vided or they will be for­feited. An Enter­prise Data Plan is required for cor­po­rate email, com­pany intranet sites and busi­ness appli­ca­tions. For more details on Data Plans, go to att.com/dataplans. Offnet Usage: If your mins of use (includ­ing unltd svcs) on other carrier’s net­works (“offnet usage”) dur­ing any two con­sec­u­tive months or your data use dur­ing any month exceeds your offnet usage allowance, AT&T may at its option ter­mi­nate your svc, deny your contd use of other car­ri­ers’ cov­er­age, or change your plan to one impos­ing usage charges for offnet usage. Your offnet usage allowance is equal to the lesser of 750 mins or 40% of the Any­time mins incl’d with your plan (data offnet usage allowance is the lesser of 24 MB or 20% of the KB incl’d with your plan). Sales tax cal­cu­lated based on price of unac­ti­vated equip­ment. AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots– Based on non-municipal com­pany owned and oper­ated hotspots. A Wi-Fi enabled device required. Other restric­tions apply. See http://www.attwifi.com/ for addi­tional ser­vices, restric­tions and loca­tions. Visual Voice­mail – Data plan required for AT&T Visual Voice­mail. Data used in reply­ing to and for­ward­ing voice­mail mes­sages via SMS, MMS or email is counted against your data plan. Applic­a­ble data charges apply if data plan lim­its have been exceeded. Inter­na­tional data charges apply to receiv­ing, reply­ing to and for­ward­ing voice­mail mes­sages while roam­ing internationally. 

Engad­get posted a full review, includ­ing this video overview.