With their competitors unveiling their own flashy new phones, Research In Motion (RIM), creators of the BlackBerry, have followed suit. At a Manhattan news conference today, RIM presented the BlackBerry Torch, featuring a touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard. The Torch will go on sale on August 12 for $199 with a two-year AT&T contract.

Delving back into their questionable expertise of touchscreens, the Torch's 3.2-inch touch screen features a virtual keyboard. For those with larger digits, the slide out keyboard makes for easy typing. Their once inferior web browsers get an update with a tabbed browsing ability. In terms of operating system, it will use the newly designed BlackBerry 6 – RIM's answer to Android and the iPhone. Similar features from the iPhone have been “borrowed,” including the pinch-to-zoom feature.

Throughout the growing foothold that Apple and Google are carving for themselves, RIM has seen their North American market share sink 41% in the first quarter. Despite this, the BlackBerry remains number one in smartphones.

The full specifications for the BlackBerry Torch 9800 are below:

• Size: 4.37 by 2.44 by 0.58 inches
• Weight: 5.7 ounces
• Screen: Colour screen, 3.2 inches, 480×360 pixels
• Touch: Finger-based
• OS: BlackBerry OS
• 3D Chip
• Voice network GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• TTY, HAC
• Talk time: 6 hours
• Exchange support: Yes
• Keypad: Full QWERTY
• Camera: 5 Megapixels with auto focus
• Video recorder with VGA resolution
• LED flash
• Web browser: BlackBerry Browser
• GPS: AT&T Navigator
• Memory: 8GB (expandable up to 32GB)
• Bluetooth: 2.1
• Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g/n
• USB: Yes
• 3.5mm jack: Yes
• UMA: No
• DLNA / UpnP: No