Today in New York City, AT&T and RIM announced their collaboration to create the all new BlackBerry Torch, the first ever slider + touchscreen BlackBerry as well as the first BlackBerry to use a Webkit browser. Oh, and it will be the very first BlackBerry to ship and run BlackBerry OS 6.0. Ralph de la Vega, AT&T Mobility CEO, calls it "the best BlackBerry device ever."

Let's go into some more detail. It has a 3.2" touchscreen with a 480x360 resolution (fair resolution, but not terrific) and a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. It has 512 MB of built in memory with a 4GB eMMC card and is expandable up to 32GB. On the back is a 5MP camera with flash and geolocation built in. There's also a nifty feature for viewing photos -- just tap twice on the photo and options to move, delete, or send that photo will instantly appear.

Courtesy: CNET

BlackBerry OS 6 of course comes preloaded with BlackBerry App World and is backwards compatible with any applications written for older versions of the OS. You can also sync your music over WiFi, view an aggregation of all your social network feeds, universal search, notification previews, the ability to add contacts and bookmarks on the home screen, and some great new developer tools. They will be able to add a "try before you buy" option in App World, set up in-game purchases, and subscription models, plus other additional APIs.

The BlackBerry Torch will launch exclusively on AT&T August 12th for $199 with a 2-year contract. AT&T will begin a large advertising campaign starting this Thursday.