Nexus S vs BlackBerry Torch: Smartphone Comparison

Nexus S vs BlackBerry Torch: Smartphone Comparison
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The Google Nexus S is the best Android phone currently in existence. Except for the new dual-core Android phones that were unveiled at CES this week. It can easily beat all the other Android devices in terms of software and performance.

The BlackBerry Torch, on the other hand, is the best BlackBerry RIM ever made. It incorporates both a touch-screen display and a QWERTY keyboard and comes with BlackBerry OS 6, the latest and the best BlackBerry OS.

In this comparison, I will check out both the Google Nexus S and the BlackBerry Torch and pit them against each other, and then finally declare a winner between the two - Google Nexus S vs BlackBerry Torch.

Design

BlackBerry Torch

The Google Nexus S has a very stylish contour design which is slightly curved. It is very slim at just 10.9 mm and has a great grip with good build quality. It has dimensions of 123.9 x 63 x 10.9 mm and weighs about 129 grams which is compact enough for a smartphone.

The BlackBerry Torch has a touch-screen - slider form factor with a touch-screen display and a sliding QWERTY keyboard. It is quite slim too with dimensions of 111 x 62 x 14.6 mm and it weighs 161 grams, which is decent enough for a slider phone.

I love the designs of both phones. If you prefer a physical QWERTY keyboard, go with the BlackBerry Torch and if you want a slim touch-screen phone, go with the Nexus S.

Display

Coming to the display, the Google Nexus S sports a 4 inch SuperAMOLED display with a capacitive touch screen and a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The SuperAMOLED display is one of the best mobile displays around with excellent contrast and superb brightness. The touch screen is very responsive and sensitive. Watching videos is a pleasure on this phone.

The BlackBerry Torch has a smaller 3.2 inch TFT capacitive touch-screen display with a resolution of 360 x 480 pixels. The display is a bit small, but the keyboard compensates for that. It isn’t very suited to watching video and the display quality is nowhere near the Nexus S.

The Nexus S is much better in the display department.

Camera

The Google Nexus S comes with a 5 MP camera with autofocus and LED flash. It can record WVGA video at 30 FPS. It also has a secondary VGA video camera.

The BlackBerry Torch has a similar 5 MP camera with autofocus and dual LED flash, but no secondary camera for video calls. It can also record VGA videos at 24 FPS. While the video capture quality isn’t much to speak of in both phones, both of them can take very good still images. The Nexus S slightly edges out the Torch though, in terms of image quality.

OS and Hardware

The Google Nexus S is a “pure” Google Android phone. It comes with the latest version of the Android OS - Android 2.3 Gingerbread in its purest form. It is arguably the best mobile smartphone OS yet, though iPhone users will probably disagree with me.

It has excellent hardware specs too. It come with a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor and 512 MB RAM. It also has 16 GB internal storage.

The BlackBerry Torch comes with the latest version of the BlackBerry OS - 6.0. The new version is easily the best version of the BlackBerry OS yet, and is optimized for touch screens. It is an excellent OS too.

The Torch comes with a 624 MHz processor and 512 MB RAM. It has 4 GB internal storage and supports up to 32 GB microSD cards.

For some reason though, I feel that Android is more mature and if I had to choose one, it would be Android, and hence the Nexus S. Android has many more apps and games in the Android Market, over 200,000, compared to the BlackBerry App Store with around 30,000.

This round goes to the Nexus S. It is much better than the BlackBerry Torch in terms of OS and hardware.

Connectivity

When it comes to connectivity, both the Google Nexus S and the BlackBerry Torch offer all the basic options. Both have GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA. Both come with Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and offer microUSB 2.0 connectivity. The Nexus S also offers DLNA and NFC. Both the phones have a GPS transceiver with A-GPS support.

The Nexus S has the better browser and the bigger display also aids in browsing websites. If you are an email junkie though, the BlackBerry Torch is better for you, thanks to the physical keyboard.

Verdict

Both the Google Nexus S and the BlackBerry Torch are great devices. They have their own pros and cons, but I feel the Nexus S is a better device for multimedia, Internet and games while the Torch is much better for corporate users who rely on email. Both have great user interfaces but the Nexus S has much better app support.

Finally it boils down to you, but I would get a Nexus S if I had to get one.

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