Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Battery
Battery life has always been a strong point for BlackBerry phones, but they don't usually feature a screen this big with a resolution this high.
In the end, the battery life of the Torch 9860 is pretty average for a phone of its kind. This may disappoint purists but it isn't bad going, all told. The 1230mAh battery should easily last you a day, or even two or three if you watch your consumption.
The quoted talk time of 4.7 hours seems about right to us, and six hours of video playback also seems to be in the ballpark.
Use the phone for all of your social networking all day over 3G and you'll swiftly chew through the battery – it's inevitable.
Still, as we said, it has a pretty average battery life, so we're not counting this against the Torch 9860.
Connectivity
Wirelessly, the BlackBerry Torch 9860 has generally got it going on.
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, 3G up to 14.4Mbps, Bluetooth and NFC support.
There's a GPS chip and digital compass, although as we mention in the Maps and Apps section, we had problems with the GPS.
Connecting to a computer is done using the micro USB port and BlackBerry Desktop Software. You can use this to load media onto the phone, or to transfer contacts, notes, tasks and calendar appointments.
The microSD card slot is another way to load media. We had to reformat ours for the Torch, even though other phones had no problem recognising it. This adds a BlackBerry-specific folder structure, but appears to just be standard FAT32, so you shouldn't have any problems mounting the card on your PC later.
Both the memory card and phone memory can appear on your computer as mass storage, for file dragging and dropping to and from them.
