It's been a year since we've seen anything new from BlackBerry, but it looks like it's been worth the wait as the phone maker has now come back to the market with three major devices and a new operating system.

BlackBerry looks set to take on the Android handsets and iPhones with the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 - which at first may look very like its ancestors the Bold 9700 and 9780, but actually has both a QWERTY keyboard (as you'd expect on a BlackBerry) plus a touch screen.

Looking good

This BlackBerry looks like it's been on a diet - it is slimmer than its predecessors, measuring just 10.5mm thick. Okay, it's no iPhone (which comes in at 9.3mm) or Galaxy S II (8.5mm), but it feels sleek and streamlined to hold; impressive when it's packing a full QWERTY keyboard and a larger screen - the touch display is 2.8 inches, that's nearly a quarter of an inch bigger than that on the 9780. It feels like it would stand up to being dropped if you had an accident, too.

Under the hood

Beneath the BlackBerry shell, there sits a 1.2GHz chip, five-megapixel snapper with 720p HD video, 768MB of RAM and a Liquid Graphics display. One of its unique points is that it is capable of making contactless payments, thanks to the NFC chip inside. This is of course, when the infrastructure is in place to use it - so it does mean the device should be future-proof when it comes to NFC anyway.

The screen is of the superior, capacitive type, proves responsive in use, and an excellent interface for the new OS.

Getting social

BlackBerry handsets have long been the favourite among professionals, offering as they do all the functions necessary for business use, but these same features are now in demand among your average user, as smartphones become the latest must-have gadget.

So it's nice to see that BlackBerry is acknowledging the ‘leisure' user with its Facebook facilities. At the top of the screen, you'll see Facebook calendar events, as well as those from your synched emails, along with Facebook messages, texts and emails. Tap the bar and you'll access the universal inbox - this is where you'll find all these notifications. It's an amazingly efficient facility, and it's the first device we've seen that brings all these events together in this way.

BlackBerry has also preloaded a new Facebook app, which is capable of syncing your friends' profile pics with contacts book - it may not seem like much, but it is a step in the right direction, bringing the Blackberry in line with other smartphones. You'll get a pretty close-to-desktop experience, with new messages, notifications and friend requests appearing in the top right-hand corner and the main news feed across most of the display.

Hit the menu button when viewing a post and you'll be offered a list of options to interact with it, or with the friend who wrote it. The only thing you can't do is send your images straight to Facebook from the camera app.

Inputting messages, surfing the net and making calls also proves incredibly user friendly.

BlackBerry 7 OS

BlackBerry 7 OS brings the touch screen to the BlackBerry - in the past the Menu button has been the core of the device, but now it is possible to hold down on most icons to reveal a pop-up options menus as you would on Windows Phone 7, iPhone and Android handsets.

However, in terms of looks, version seven looks pretty much like its predecessor. It has five panels so that you can organise your apps as you wish - they are Favourites, Media, All, Downloaded and Frequent (which is populated automatically).

It's an intuitive way to divide up the apps, and that touch navigation and the larger screen mean it works really smoothly - far better than on the Bold 9780. While it is possible to move the apps around, the process is a bit old school - you have to hold down an icon, choose ‘move' from the pop-up menu and then move it around the panel using the trackpad. 

When it comes to apps, BlackBerry has a long way to go before it will be able to compete with the Apple App Store and Android Market - there are around 15,000 apps, compared with their more than 400,000, plus you'll miss out on the more fun, silly apps, as well as games.

Net surfing

In the past we've been really disappointed with the browser on BlackBerry devices - but the Touch 9900 benefits from the new OS, which means the browser should be 40% faster than its predecessor, according to RIM. We compared it with the HTC Evo 3D and it was a good third faster.

Sites that are not optimised for mobiles autofit on the display, and you can autofit specific sections or columns by double-tapping on your chosen area. Navigating the internet is far easier with a touch-screen - there's pinch to zoom, copy and paste and more accurate input recognition for any of those more fiddly links.

Copy and pasting is not quite as you'd find on Android and iPhone handsets - hold down on the text you want and a pop-up menu appears with options such as go back, refresh - and the one you want - Select. This offers up a pair of tabs, which you then drag to highlight the text you want to copy. Hold down on this and you then get the option of copying. Hold down again to paste.

Video star

Like the iPhone, the Touch 9900 has no Flash support. This may be an issue for some people, but we're still to be convinced that it is really needed on mobile phones. The new display technology gives web pages a better look too, as they appear brighter, with more clarity.

Snapper

In the past, the cameras on BlackBerrys have not been that impressive, and the Touch 9900 doesn't deviate from the theme. There is a five-megapixel lens, but its resulting images are pretty average ­ expect noise and washed-out colours, especially for pictures taken in low light. As on many mobiles, the flash has a tendency to overexpose, and there is a good lag of a second on the shutter, so you'll need to hold it really steady to avoid blurry snaps. But there are plenty of extra options, such as settings modes, face detection and geo-tagging. You can take a snap with the trackpad, which is a nice feature.

There is onboard memory of 8GB, which is pretty decent, and you can expand this by up to 32GB thanks to the microSD slot. Like BlackBerry 6 devices, it is possible to sync Windows media Play and iTunes, so you'll easily be able to transfer your music collection and keep it up to date on this phone.

Viewing downloaded movies is not going to be easy - the video and music players provide support only for standard formats - and that doesn't include DivX or Xvid. Mind you, that display is not really the right size for video viewing.

Our conclusion

It may look like its predecessors, but the Bold Touch 9900 is a very different beast. The inclusion of a touch-screen means that things like the panel home screens finally come into their own, and we were really impressed with the incredibly efficient universal inbox.

The only thing keeping this latest launch from BlackBerry becoming a serious contender for most business and pleasure users, is the fact that the app store just can't compete with the Apple App Store and Android Market.