While Blackberry has an unrivalled cabinet of QWERTY smartphones, it’s had a hard time shaking off its businessy rep. The Storm and Storm 2 were its first attempts at providing an alternative to the iPhone, but still felt like a CEO awkwardly wearing a party hat and schmoozing with the company freshers.

The Torch, though, is a different beast. It’s the Canadian company’s first slider phone, combines a full QWERTY keyboard with a 3.2in capacitive touchscreen and brings a fresh new Blackberry 6.0 operating system.

BlackBerry Torch 9800 - Design & Build:

Stowing a QWERTY keyboard beneath the touchscreen deck means the Torch is quite a bulky unit. Girth aside, the slide action is smooth, satisfyingly heavy and, like the rest of the device, as solid as they come. That button panel, like the rest of the design, won’t surprise anyone who’s seen a BlackBerry before.

In 2010, Research In Motion claimed that the its Blackberry Torch 9800 was the "Best Blackberry ever", but it looks like that could soon be about to change. Enter the "Blackberry Torch 2 9810", RIM's next-gen slider smartphone with bumped up specs. 

BlackBerry Torch 9810 - Design & Build:

Doubling the 624MHz CPU of the original Torch to 1.2GHz, the second-gen Torch is rumored to pack twice as much muscle under the hood. This will power its 3.2-inch 640 x 480 VGA touchscreen, which is coupled with a slide out QWERTY keypad. To make the most of its physical keys, it will also arrive equipped with Facebook and Twitter integration, a dedicated email client and Blackberry Messenger (BBM).