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"  Not so long ago, it took very little effort to rattle off a list of things that Blackberries were the absolute best at. Killer keyboards? Nothing beat the &amp;#039;Berry. Worry-free e-mail service? Ditto. Epic battery life? Gotta grab a BlackBerry. But as iPhones and Android-based phones have steadily increased their functionality\u2014and their ability to thrive in the business world, which was once BlackBerry&amp;#039;s exclusive domain\u2014BlackBerry hardware and the operating systems that fuel it have begun to feel positively dated.  So today&amp;#039;s announcement of the BlackBerry Torch\u2014the first phone to run the new BlackBerry 6.0 operating system\u2014feels in many ways like the Canadian company is playing catch-up. Today&amp;#039;s customers expect large capacitive touchscreens, intuitive media-friendly interfaces and generously stocked app stores. And BlackBerry seems intent on giving it to them.  The resulting phone, which comes out Aug. 12 on AT&amp;amp;amp;T, feels like a bizarre mix between a Palm Pre and a BlackBerry Storm\u2014a touchscreen slider with a full qwerty keyboard. Or, as RIM executives surely hope, a phone with something for everybody. That touchscreen is all party on the outside, but slide it up, and it&amp;#039;s time to get down to business.  So will Torch succeed where BlackBerry&amp;#039;s last touchscreen phone, the disappointing Storm, failed? That really depends on how well the company does at making its app store an inviting place for developers to bring their top-notch wares. These days, phone platforms live and die on the quality of the programs that populate them, and next to the iPhone App Store and Android Market, the BlackBerry App World currently feels a bit underwhelming. Not surprisingly, RIM is trying to lure in developers with an absolutely astonishing mix of ways for them to cash in. Sure, they can charge for apps, but they can also charge for add-ons and expansions, there are a number of ways to add advertisements to their programs, and there is the opportunity to set up subscription models (an obvious swipe at Apple, which has yet to allow such shenanigans in its App Store).  And, in that regard, we&amp;#039;re taking a wait-and-see approach. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/reviews/a6011/blackberry-torch-phone-review/>