Is the Blackberry Torch already going up in flames?

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the BlackBerry Torch only managed to sell 150,000 units at launch {Electronista}.  That may seem like a large number, but in terms of handset sales, it’s relatively nothing.  Most Android phones in recent memory have been selling out on day one, and the iPhone 4 sold a million on the first day.  All of those phones had issues with inventory, with phones being sold out for quite some time (sometimes sold out just from pre-orders).  The Torch, on the other hand, has no supply issues, unless stores have more stock of the phone than they planned to have, in which case it could be a bigger problem for RIM.

Along with the unconfirmed sales numbers, there’s another sign that the Torch isn’t doing as well as expected.  Amazon.com has lowered the price of the phone already.  Just five days after the phone went on sale for $199.99, Amazon is selling it for $99.99 with a two-year contract {Engadget}.  It brings the Torch more in line with the mid-range Android phones that have similar (or sometime even better) hardware specs, and a larger app ecosystem.  So if you wanted a Torch, now is a great time to pick one up.

The BlackBerry Torch looks like RIM decided to do it’s own riff on the Palm Pre form factor, and it actually turned out pretty well.  It has a 3.2-inch touchscreen, with the ubiquitous four BlackBerry buttons and trackpad beneath it.  The introduction of the trackpad makes it obvious RIM is moving away from the ill-fated Storm and it’s ridiculous click-screen.  Instead, the Torch has a normal multi-touch capacitive touchscreen.  It still has an on-screen keyboard, but RIM knows it’s users prefer it’s great physical keyboard, so it included on that slides beneath the screen.

With the Torch, RIM is happy to tout the Universal Search available in BlackBerry 6.  Universal Search will search everything on the phone (email, music, apps, App World) as well as the internet.  RIM has also included a feature not even Apple has been able to figure out yet: wireless syncing of media to devices via WiFi.  In one last innovation in BlackBerry 6, RIM has enabled a two finger tap to select and move multiple items or folders around on the phone.  The browser is finally WebKit-based like the browsers on iOS, Android and WebOS devices.  It also compresses data two to three times normal, which would help keep data usage down.  The downside is it seems there is no way to make the browser fool websites into thinking it’s a desktop browser, which would keep many sites to the stripped-down mobile versions. {PC Mag}

For the device itself, while the form factor and OS are exciting, the specs aren’t.  The 3.2-inch screen has a resolution of a measly 480×360, whereas most smartphones now have screens with a resolution of 800×480.  The processor is also lagging behind, running at just 624 MHz compared to the 1 GHz processor in most other flagship smartphones.  Out of the box, the Torch will have 8 GB of storage, 4 GB of built-in storage plus a 4 GB micro SD card which can be replaced with cards of up to 32 GB {Gizmodo}.  That’s a bit of a letdown, and can make the phone lag quite a bit.  Still, it’s not the worst iPhone/Android challenger that RIM could have come up with, and one we wouldn’t mind having some time to play with.

Can the BlackBerry 6 compete with the iPhone & Android?

Research In Motion, the makers of BlackBerry, realized this a while back, and introduced the first BlackBerry Storm.  Problem is, it wasn’t very good, and the OS didn’t seem to work very well with touchscreens.  Now RIM is showing off BlackBerry 6, the next version of the OS that’s geared toward smartphones, and it actually looks pretty good.  BlackBerry 6 looks to have some social networking built into the OS, making sharing info and finding info through Facebook and Twitter much easier than before.  The web browser is also greatly improved, and will be based on WebKit, the same engine that powers the web browsers in iOS, Android, and WebOS. {Mashable}

BlackBerry 6 is still distinctly a BlackBerry OS, it has a very similar aesthetic, but seems to be a bit closer to WebOS as well.  RIM has a history of potentially exciting products, like the Black Berry Storm, that are ultimately uninteresting or just don’t live up to potential.  That’s not to say BlackBerry 6 and whatever new device touchscreen-centric device might run it will be bad, but it’s enough to be a bit wary.  That being said, the UI is pretty exciting, and possibly the most interesting thing to happen to BlackBerry devices in quite some time.