The Torch 9860 retains that look of the Storm family of devices. Luckily for us (and RIM) it feels and operates completely different. Long gone is the irritating click down and unresponsive screen and of course long gone is the name Storm.

In terms of the size the 9860 is 120 x 62x 11.5mm and weighs in at just 135g. It feels comfortable to hold and although slightly longer than other BlackBerry devices due out or already in the market, it does not feel too big when carried in your pocket.

The screen is a beautifully responsive TFT capacitive touchscreen with capable of displaying an ultra-crisp 16million colours. It is 3.7inches in size and includes an optical trackpad and is capable of Multi-touch input and has a proximity sensor and accelerometer sensor built in. Granted these are now standard amongst touchscreen smartphones now, but it is refreshing to see RIM at least trying to keep up with the competition.

The internal memory on the 9860 is 4GB with support for 32GB microSD cards and hurrah! The 9860 actually has the microSD card slot in a position that makes hot swapping cards possible. They have not hidden it underneath the battery or beside the SIM card.

Connectivity is something everyone buys a BlackBerry device for and the 9860 comes with HSDPA (14.5Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76Mbls) support as well as Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP. The device is supposed to support NFC upon release but our evaluation unit does not seem to support it. In terms of wired connectivity the device uses microUSB for charging and synchronising with BlackBerry Desktop Manager. The 9860 also supports GPS with A-GPS also supported.

I was desperately holding to the hope that one of the new BlackBerry devices would come running the QNX operating system as found on the BlackBerry Playbook. Unfortunately this is not the case. The 9860 comes with OS7 which although an improvement over OS5, still leaves BlackBerry somewhat behind the market leaders. That being said, the on screen keyboard on the 9860 is rather good. When holding the device upright (portrait) it can be a tad fiddly when responding to longer emails or texts, but once switched sideways (landscape) the keyboard becomes much roomier and easier to manage, in fact it becomes almost easy.

The camera on the 9860 is a low 5MP one with autofocus (and continuous autofocus), Geo-tagging and face detection. There is no secondary camera but the primary does support video and can record up to 720p. Check out the pictures and videos we took by visiting our 9860 Wiki page; here. (Link to be added).

The 9900 battery is not great, it is no big secret, however the battery on the 9860 seems to be an improvement. During testing I was able to get 2 days of life from the Li-Ion 1230 mAh battery. That included some Facebook and Twitter time, Email usage, BBM and of course my new favourite the 3D Rollercoaster 2 game available from BlackBerry App World. And yes, Wi-Fi was on during the full 2 days.

All in all the 9860 is great BlackBerry device. It looks from distance like it should belong with the Storm family but as mentioned it luckily leaves that stigma behind. It now sits in the Torch family and performs as a BlackBerry should. It would have been nice to see QNX on this phone especially with screen size taken into consideration but I guess we will just have to wait a little while longer for that.

Review written by Kristian Wingfield-Bennett