In a world led by BlackBerry, the BlackBerry Torch 9810 ($49.99) would be king. Built on the same platform as RIM's other new BlackBerry Bold and Torch smartphones, the Torch 9810 is dramatically faster than previous BlackBerrys, with a far better Web browser and a much more powerful processor. Looking almost exactly like the previous Torch, the new model has all the strengths that four-star smartphone did: solid build, great battery life, and an excellent keyboard.

But the Torch doesn't exist in a vacuum. RIM's BlackBerry 7 phones have been lapped several times by their Android, iOS, and even Windows Phone competitors in terms of apps (both number and quality), Web browsing and general user interface aspects. 

This won't change the minds of enterprise buyers who love BlackBerry's manageability or business e-mailers for whom messaging is their first, second, and third priority. For that reason, it makes the cut for our list of The Best Phones on AT&T. But it makes the Torch 9810 a tough sell to mainstream consumers.

AT&T seems to know this, by the way. $49.99 is an absolutely killer price for a smartphone with these specs. But I won't let the low price sway my review.

Physical Features and Call Quality
This Torch looks almost exactly the same as the previous Torch 9800. It's the same 4.4 by 2.4 by .6 inches (HWD) and the same 5.7 ounces, with the same silver edge around black plastic components. The back is now a flimsy-feeling black plastic with a checkered pattern, something I don't like. The QWERTY keyboard, just like on the previous Torch, is excellent, although it's a little flatter and tighter than the keyboards on BlackBerry Bolds and Curves. There's relatively little here to say "this is a new device," until you turn the phone on.

Hit the wake-up button on the top right—the same place it used to be—and you're presented with a much sharper image on the 9810's 3.2-inch screen than on its predecessor's. The screen is now 640-by-480, rather than 360-by-480, allowing for sharper text, more detailed icons, and often teensy-weensy links on Web pages that you can't quite click on with your finger.

As a voice phone, the Torch 9810 has one major flaw. It over-reports its signal strength. In my weak-signal test, I found the Torch 9810 reported one or two bars when it didn't have enough signal to make a call, which was quite frustrating. In tests around New York City later that day I saw the same thing happening.

When you can connect, call quality is very good. The earpiece is nearly perfect: just the right volume, with clear voices. Transmissions tend to let through a little more background noise than I'd like, but you can still hear the voice on the other side. The speakerphone is moderate-to-loud, and transmissions are clear. Talk time was terrific at 8 hours, 3 minutes, and the phone lasted well more than a day on standby.

Bluetooth support is excellent here, as is voice dialing. In my tests, the Torch connected to three different Bluetooth headsets instantly, supporting all of their features, both stereo and mono. It's one of the most pleasant Bluetooth experiences I've ever had.

The Torch 9810 isn't 4G. It runs at HSPA+ 14.4 speeds on AT&T's network and when roaming abroad. Thanks to RIM's server-side compression, though, email and social-networking messages transmit extremely quickly. The phone has a Wi-Fi hotspot mode that works with the appropriate plan.

OS and Apps
The Torch 9810 is one of the first phones to run the new BlackBerry 7 OS, along with the Bold 9900, Bold 9930 ($249.99, 3 stars), Torch 9850 and 9860. The new OS looks and works a lot like the previous OS 6; in fact, it was originally called OS 6.1 before RIM bumped up the numbering.

The biggest change in BlackBerry 7 is the all-new, modern Web browser. The BlackBerry browser has dramatically improved with BlackBerry 7. It isn't appallingly slow any more, although it still lacks (and will never get) Adobe Flash. The browser handled HTML5 tasks and benchmarks very well, scoring a respectable 49,799 on BrowserMark—better than top-of-the-line, dual-core Android 2.3 phones and the fastest Windows phones. Web apps like Gmail and Kayak loaded well.

The small, high-res screen is made for small text sizes, though, which sometimes makes for very small touch targets. On the mobile site of the New York Times, for instance, lines of text were very small and tight, making it tough to tap on them. That's frustrating. Pinch-zooming is extremely smooth, but the browser doesn't automatically reformat columns to fit the screen the way Opera Mini does, so if you zoom, you usually end up having to scroll horizontally.

Don't forget that with BlackBerry, thanks to server-side compression, folks on limited data plans get more data for their money. According to RIM's calculations, BlackBerries use 1/4 of the data of other phones for e-mail, and 1/2 for Web browsing. Especially if you travel abroad and have to suffer high roaming rates, this could be a real money saver.

BlackBerry 7 also brings "liquid graphics," which just seems to be a creative way to describe the UI being faster. It's indeed faster, and the phone responds to most key presses instantly. The new BlackBerry Protect app offers the ability to find and wipe your lost phone from afar, and the phone comes with the full version of the excellent Microsoft Office document editor Docs to Go, along with a slew of other apps, most of them useful.

For a while now, BlackBerries have been absolutely stellar messaging and social networking machines. The Torch integrates Facebook and Twitter messaging into its universal inbox, and Facebook contacts fold neatly into the address book. Email integration is effortless, and the phone supports HTML messages—although it still, of course, doesn't natively connect to Microsoft Exchange.

Beyond the preloads, though, the BlackBerry 7 app situation is simply disastrous. When I checked BlackBerry App World there were only about 3,000 apps for this phone. That's less than one-fiftieth of the apps available for Android. It isn't just about numbers, either. Big-name apps and entire categories are missing, and many of the apps look like they're designed for phones from five years ago. Games have pathetic MIDI soundtracks or tiny little audio loops, because of restricted file sizes.

Want music? There's Slacker, but no Pandora, or Rhapsody, or Spotify. News? No New York Times, Reuters or AP Mobile apps. Video? No Netflix, Hulu, or TV.com. Like games? Hope you won't miss Angry Birds, Cut the Rope or … almost anything, really. Many of these brands are in fact available for older BlackBerrys, but they haven't been updated to appear on BlackBerry 7 devices yet. But even with the full BlackBerry 6 catalog, pickings are slimmer than on other platforms.

And downloading from App World is a trial. Loading categories of apps regularly took at least ten seconds in my tests, and longer to fill in the little thumbnails next to apps. This BlackBerry, I'm sad to say, is pretty close to being a feature phone: you should be happy with the features it has and not hope for more. That's most of the reason this phone's rating isn't higher.

Finally, we're always skittish about recommending phones whose operating system is about to be replaced. RIM is in the middle of a major transition to QNX, a powerful, next-generation OS that we first saw on the BlackBerry PlayBook ($499-699, 2.5 stars). BlackBerry 7 will live on as the OS for RIM's lesser messaging-focused smartphones, but it's clear that much of the development energy at RIM has switched to QNX.

Multimedia
Like its predecessors, this BlackBerry is a very good camera phone. The still and video camera modes are both excellent. The still camera is unusually speedy and snaps sharp 5-megapixel shots indoors and out. The video mode takes smooth 720p high-def videos at 30 frames per second.

Music, videos and photos sync with both Macs and PCs using RIM's free software. The music player handled all of our formats except WMA. Videos played at up to 720p resolution, but the phone was a bit picky about formats; it's best to sync your videos through RIM's software, which will re-encode them properly. You get about 6.2GB of free space, and you can add a MicroSD card under the back cover; our 32GB SanDisk card worked fine.

There's no HDMI out to play videos on TVs and no front-facing camera, both of which are becoming more common on high-end smartphones. Video streaming options are also pretty weak. I couldn't get AT&T's Live TV app to run, and as I mentioned above, there aren’t many other third-party entertainment apps to choose from.

Conclusions
The BlackBerry Torch 9810 is a step up for messaging phone users, and existing BlackBerry owners will find it refreshingly speedy. But anyone attracted to Android phones, iPhones, or Windows Phones will have trouble with this phone's thin, poor-quality third-party app selection, slightly awkward browser, and touch screen that's smaller than the industry standards of 3.5 to 4 inches.

The Torch 9810 puts us in an uncomfortable position: We have no Editors' Choice QWERTY keyboard smartphone on AT&T, but this phone just isn't it. If the keyboard is your primary concern, the Torch is an excellent phone, but the lack of apps and the ancient OS prevent us from giving it an award.

AT&T has no Windows Phones or iOS phones with keyboards, and its keyboarded Android phones are all a bit underpowered. If you want a top-of-the-line phone with a keyboard and a terrific app selection, you might want to switch carriers for a phone like the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide ($199.99, 4.5 stars) or the HTC EVO Shift 4G on Sprint ($99.99, 4 stars).

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