Research In Motion (RIM) have unveiled their latest BlackBerry handset, the Blackberry Torch 9800, at a press conference in New York.
The smartphone is the Canadian company’s first touch-screen slide-out phone to hit the market and is also the first BlackBerry to use RIM’s new WebKit-based browser, which forms part of the new Blackberry 6 operating system .
BlackBerry 6 offers a better web browsing experience and integrated social features. A new universal inbox allows users to access updates from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in the same place as their BlackBerry Messenger emails.
The Torch is also the first BlackBerry to come with RIM’s App World application store preinstalled, making it easier to access apps, and the first to have 4GB of internal memory, although only half a gigabyte is available for the installation of apps.
Other features include a sleek 3.2-inch touch-screen display, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera with flash, built-in GPS for location-based applications and a “universal search” function.
The Blackberry Torch 9800 will be released in the US from August 12, and is expected to arrive in the UK later this year on both the Vodafone and Orange networks.