Torch Fails to Shine

Despite once being a long-time and committed BlackBerry user, following my departure from the traditional corporate career track, I drifted to more so-called right brain oriented and exotic mobile telephones. First came the Apple iPhone (which met its untimely end following a short distance fall from my hand to our kitchen floor), then came a pair of unlocked Nokia models – the E51 and E75. However as my own company continued to develop, I found myself increasingly thinking of returning to my trusted old, belt-holstered business partner the BlackBerry. Not surprisingly, as the new 9800 Torch model was just on its release horizon as I made the decision to make the switch, it was this very smart phone that I purchased on its first day of sale.

Unfortunately, while the new 9800 Torch offers BlackBerry users many new and exciting features that were previously reserved only to iPhone and Android enthusiasts (not including the touch screen of course; BlackBerry introduced that to their product line’s features with their previously released Storm models), many of these turned out to be of little use or interest to me. I don’t watch movies or television on my phone (nor should anyone anymore – unless connected to a WiFi signal – now that AT&T has revised their data plans giving customers less service for the same price) and I don’t need a running feed of all my social media connections (quite frankly, I have so many that I would miss most of their status updates and tweets in an unfiltered feed of all activity).

Add to this the fact that the design of the 9800 Torch necessitated it being a “slider” to allow for the inclusion of both a touch screen and a traditional QWERTY keyboard; a feature that while at first I assessed to be a great benefit turned out after a few days of hands-on use to be more of a problem and a source of worry. The problem is that the keyboard is not easy or quick to slide out due to the ergonomic design of the overall device – there simply isn’t anything to grab or push so slipping a fingernail into the dividing point is really the only way to do it. The worry is that as there was significant “wobble” of the top screen and the base keyboard sections of the device from day one that this would, following frequent opening and closing, be a likely point of physical wear and eventual mechanical failure. Additionally, the green and red action keys at the bottom of the touch screen surface were not discrete moveable keys but partially free-bending pieces of the screen itself, making them additional points of likely mechanical failure from heavy use.

Then there is the issue of compatibility. As most smart phone users know, a significant portion of the overall utility of such devices resides in their use of user-selected applications. iPhone offers hundreds of thousands of these “apps” through their iTunes store, and Android phone users are gaining ground rapidly. While BlackBerry admittedly supports far fewer, many of those that it does have become cornerstone tools to BlackBerry users. Sadly, due to the 9800 Torch being the first BlackBerry device to use the new BlackBerry 6 operating system, many application providers have not yet caught up with this new platform, consequently, some very significant applications aren’t yet compatible with it. Even more importantly and far more simply, most accessories for the 9800 Torch are still unavailable (including the all-important holster case, which purchasers will surprisingly not find one of in the box along with the phone).

Thus after only a week, I drove over to my nearest AT&T store and swapped out my 9800 Torch for the well-established tried and true BlackBerry 9700 Bold. Is it as sexy as the new Torch? Probably not to most of the techno-intelligensia, but it feels solid in my hand, does everything I need it to do, is compatible with most every BlackBerry application available, and should any piece of it ever fail due to heavy wear, its component structure allows most pieces to be easily replaced.

But perhaps just as important in a subjective way as these previously noted things are in an objective one, I’m familiar and comfortable with it. I know that such feelings might be strange and incomprehensible to many who live at the intersection of product design and marketing who often make decisions under the idea that things that are new and different will always get people to buy them; however unless the difference truly makes the item in question better, the bounce in sales will be short-lived and potentially detrimental to the product line as a whole.

I think that the folks at BlackBerry know this for on the first day of sale for the 9800 Torch, I noticed another new product featured on the BlackBerry website – the BlackBerry Curve 3G. Far more similar to the classic BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard phone profile, the homepage splash announcement of this new model on the very day the company’s “latest and greatest” design went on sale makes me suspect that the 9800 Torch and its touch screen – QWERTY hybrid design might simply be another Storm-like sidetrip for the BlackBerry product line rather than an indication of the company’s future products. It also makes me even more confident that my switch to the 9700 Bold was the right decision to make.