RIM and AT&T Reveal The Blackberry Torch

AT&T’s President and CEO of Mobility and Consumer Markets, Ralph de la Vega is calling the new Blackberry Torch “the best Blackberry device ever”.

A touch phone that features a full qwerty slider keyboard, the Blackberry Torch will be the first Blackberry to use the highly anticipated sixth version of the company’s operating system.

Going on sale August 12th, the phone comes equipped with a 5 megapixel camera and will be outfitted with a number of new features that Blackberry fans have been requesting for a while.

Mashable brings us the following list that highlights some of the new features.

Redesigned homescreen

* Notification previews: a tap on a notification provides you with more details about it.
* Additional content and views: put individual bookmarks and contacts on the homescreen, plus swipe actions that let users navigate between frequently used items.
* Universal search: searches all of the content on your device — e-mails, texts, BBMs, calendar appointments, etc. — plus the web. One cool example: search for an artist and you can pull up their music in Slacker Radio.

Media features

* View pictures by folder or date.
* Ability to select multiple pictures at once via touchscreen: you can then share them with friends or move them to different folders.
* Geolocation: camera names pictures based on where you are according to the device’s GPS.
* Podcast app: subscribe, download and listen to podcasts
* Wi-fi music sync: see your entire library of music on your device
* Unified social feeds: an aggregation of feeds from Facebook (Facebook), Twitter (Twitter), Flickr (Flickr), etc.

Applications

* Simplified app discovery: on the Torch, BlackBerry App World comes pre-installed. App search is also built-in to the new universal search feature.
* New payment options: developers can now setup a try before you buy option, subscription models, and the ability for in-game purchases, like buying additional levels on games.
* New advertising APIs: developers get access to multiple ad networks and analytics for their ads.
* Enhanced dev platform: ability to access more stuff on the device, like calendar and location.
* Apps (Apps) developed for earlier versions of BlackBerry will still working on BlackBerry 6.

The Torch looks great and being a Blackberry user myself, I will hopefully be picking one up. The only concern I have is with the touch screen. The Blackberry Storm, which also featured a touch screen, was not very well received and there were many complaints about it. Hopefully RIM has listened to their customers and fixed up the touch screen for the Torch.

Check out this video below to see some of the new features in action.