BlackBerry Torch 9850 hits Verizon September 8

By Rue Liu/Sept. 6, 2011 1:21 pm EST

RIM's third attempt at a complete touchscreen QWERTY-free smartphone, the BlackBerry Torch 9850, is set to launch on Verizon on September 8. This will be the second out of seven BlackBerry 7 OS handsets that the company has planned to launch this fall, the first being the BlackBerry Bold 9930 that launched a few weeks back.

We've done a full review on the BlackBerry Torch 9850, which sports a 3.7-inch touchscreen WVGA (800 x 480) display, 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon single-core processor, and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, capable of 720p video capture. It also offers 4GB of internal storage that's expandable with a microSD card.

It's priced at $199.99 with a new two-year contract and will be available online starting September 8, but won't hit retail stores until September 15. Another device set to launch for Verizon on the 8th of this month is the much anticipated Droid Bionic, but this Android-powered smartphone is expected to be dual-core and 4G LTE. That's tough competition there.