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Like all BlackBerry phones, the Torch’s QWERTY keypad is supposedly flawless, with great tactile feedback and perfect spacing/layout. The slider is solid, and the phone built sturdily all round.

The screen is not very large when compared with other modern smartphones, and has a comparatively low resolution of 480x360. The capacitive touchscreen was thought to be responsive though, with great multi-touch gesture controls.
As for the interface, the phone was apparently well-integrated with social networks and instant messaging, giving users aggregated feeds in a unified inbox.

Performance-wise, the phone’s 624MHz processor reportedly seemed slow, as did the browser – at least compared to the iPhone 4.

As an all-out business phone, it wouldn’t be fair to compare the BlackBerry Torch to an iPhone 4 or any modern Android device, but if one did, the most obvious disadvantage the Torch has is the lack of apps/games in BlackBerry App World, which are available in their thousands at the Android Market and Apple App Store.

Another disadvantage in the sphere of multimedia and apps is the lack of internal memory, which amounts to 4GB onboard, and a 4GB microSD card that ships with the device, making to 8GB total. This can of course be expanded to 36GB total, with a 32GB microSD card.

As for battery life, the phone is again behind its other BlackBerry siblings, offering 5.5 hours of talk time and 432 hours of standby time with its 1300 mAh battery.

While the 5MP camera is considered sufficient, the lack of a front-facing camera is questionable, as is the lack of HDMI output, though the phone does play quite a few video formats, such as MP4, WMV, H.263 and H.264.

Looking at all the above, it seems that RIM has not really got a trump card on its hands, just when it most needed one. Competing against smartphones that might not fit the niche of business readily, BlackBerry either had to choose to focus completely on making its new flagship a business monster, or make it as multi-functional as its competition. By choosing the second route, RIM has taken the more difficult path, competing against established players in the media and apps world. At least though, it doesn't have any antenna issues!

His equipment managed to fool cell phones in the audience that the setup was a real cell phone base station, and when they automatically routed their calls through it, he was able to intercept and record the conversations, which included encrypted calls. While this technology only works on outgoing calls at present, Chris Paget’s equipment can easily be duplicated, a worrying fact by itself, apart from the flaw in 2G GSM network acquisition protocols, which automatically redirect phones to connect to the base station with the strongest signal, regardless of its origin. In this manner, encrypted calls are not free from interception, because the base station can simply deactivate it once it acquires the signal. Though GSM specs insist that a cell phone should display a warning if it is forced to connect to a station that doesn’t have encryption, most SIM cards disable this feature to avoid innumerable alerts during operation. In essence, your call could be intercepted and recorded without your slightest knowledge.

This technology is nothing new in theory, and governments already use what are called IMSI catchers to pull off a similar feat, which can even capture data transfers. However, what is revolutionary is the low-cost and ease with which the setup can be made and procured, by anyone from the common man to the underfunded terrorist.

As you can imagine, the demonstration has already created a furore in the industry, with security experts as well as carriers suddenly worried about how to make 2G GSM networks safer. On the flip-side, maybe a version of this technology could be used by governments to monitor calls that they were previously unable to decrypt, specifically, the Indian government’s current need to decode BlackBerry calls