The newest BlackBerry has been revealed as the Torch 9800, and, as expected, contains both a touch-screen interface and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, along with the company's latest operating system 6.0.

The tri-band HSDPA Torch is the first BlackBerry to launch with the 6.0 upgrades, which include everything from more robust touch- screen operation to expanded messaging and contact/social networking capabilities, and a customizable home screen with easily movable icons. In addition to the ability to integrate information from BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace through Social Feeds, customers will also enjoy apps for popular services like Podcasts and YouTube. Text messages will also now be able to be viewed as threaded conversations.

The capacitive touch screen measures a decent 3.2", and offers 360 x 480 resolution. The backlit, slide-out keyboard has been designed, says RIM, to "feel optimally balanced when opened for typing." The phone also includes the optical trackpad as an alternate way of navigating menus, along with a 624 Mhz processor, 512 MB of flash memory, and 4 GB built-in memory plus a microSD card slot (supports up to 32 GB, including SDHC format). Another upgrade with the 6.0 operating system is the ability to click and hold the trackpad or touch the display for an extended period of time to call up the most common actions or tasks of an application. Holding down the menu key will also bring up a visual grid of all currently-running applications for quick and easy access.

The camera has been improved to an impressive 5 MP with flash, continuous auto focus, image stabilization, scene modes, geo-tagging, zoom, and the ability to record videos at up to VGA resolution. Users will also be able to more easily organize photos, grouping them into various categories. Like all of the latest BlackBerries, it comes with WiFi, WiFi Music Sync for viewing an iTunes or Windows Media Player music library, Bluetooth 2.1,

According to RIM, a new Webkit-based browser renders HTML Web pages and e-mails quickly, and allows for tabbed viewing, pinch and zoom navigating, and auto-wrap text zoom for intelligently wrapping text in a column. A universal search has been added to the home screen.

The battery affords up to 5.8 hours of talk time, or 30 hours of audio playback or six hours of video playback. The Torch will be available in the U.S. on August 12 through AT&T for US$199.99 with a two-year agreement. Canadian availability has not yet been disclosed.

Developers can find the new BlackBerry Java SDK v6.0, which provides all the tools necessary for making apps that fully utilize the new features of BlackBerry 6, available for download at www.blackberry.com/developers/java.

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