BlackBerry Torch 9850/9860 hands-on!

We already gave you rundowns of the all new BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Torch 9810 smartphones, and we also spent time with the BlackBerry Torch 9850/9860 tonight up in Toronto. We picked up this full-touchscreen device with the fear that it could be as miserable as the Storm was, but we were pleasantly surprised. The large screen is very responsive and the 1.2GHz processor has enough power to make every movement through BlackBerry OS 7 feel snappy. The web browser loaded pages quickly and the virtual keyboard was very easy to type on; it’s an absolute pleasure compared to RIM’s “award-winning” SurePress, and it definitely improves upon the Storm 2’s display as well. We were also very impressed at how thin and light the phone is, but it’s not so light that it feels cheap. BlackBerry OS 7 itself isn’t revolutionary, though, so hopefully we see some better apps for BlackBerry smartphones now that there’s some hardware muscle to back it all up. AT&T has already announced that it will be carrying the device later this year, so all we can do in the meantime is wait. For now, have a look at the rest of the photos in our hands-on gallery below.