The unveiling of Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry Torch earlier this week has so far generated mixed reactions among industry analysts. Though the new smartphone is the first from RIM to support the company’s new BlackBerry 6 OS, one major drawback is the handset’s failure to achieve parity with rival smartphone platforms.
When it comes to touchscreen capabilities, for example, RIM continues to trail the market. The Torch’s 3.2-inch, capacitive touchscreen, which features a resolution of 360×480 pixels, doesn’t compare to the iPhone 4’s 3.5-inch widescreen multi-touch display, which delivers a resolution of 960×640 pixels.
“The touch capability afforded by the new BlackBerry 6 OS is definitely an improvement,” noted Al Hilwa, director of applications development software at IDC. “However, with this specific phone, the screen size and resolution is probably a generation behind the state of the art today from Apple or Android.”
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Gartner Research Director Carolina Milanesi sees the touchscreen capabilities of the BlackBerry Torch potentially offering a nice upgrade path for BlackBerry Bold users. “From demos I have seen, it seems that the new OS is an improvement,” Milanesi wrote in a blog. But it “is not a feature that will set RIM apart from its competitors,” she added.
The BlackBerry Torch also continues to lag rival smartphone platforms in processor speed and storage memory. RIM’s new smartphone features a 624-MHz processor, 512MB of flash memory and 4GB of built-in memory storage that is expandable to a maximum of 32GB with a microSD/SDHD memory card. By contrast, the iPhone 4 ships with a substantially faster one-GHz Apple A4 processor and the user’s choice of either 16GB or 32GB of internal flash storage.
On the other hand, Hilwa noted that the BlackBerry 6 OS integrates admirable improvements such as a new browser based on RIM’s acquisition of Torch Mobile last…