Lots of news and exciting stuff today! Ralph de la Vega (AT&T president) and Mike Lazaridis (RIM President & Co-CEO) were on stage bringing us the Torch 9800 and BlackBerry 6. Let’s wrap it up to the most significant things:

The Torch 9800 was named after a company called Torch Mobile (who specialized in Webkit browsers) which became part of the RIM family, and also because it’s the first BlackBerry to have the new Webkit browser. It’s also RIM’s first ever combination slider and touch screen device.

Launching with the 9800 there will be BlackBerry 6 and it has some hot new features:

• Universal search – Just open it up and search your BlackBerry; feeds, settings, email, web, calendars, text messages even App World – in short: simply everything. And it’s simple to use: Slide the Torch open and start typing, that’s it! Apps can also tie into universal search bringing back all kinds of results.

• Unified Social Feed – Using feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Google Talk, everything in one list, also featuring seemless integration across  applications.

• Redesigned Media Environment – Working via WiFi for seemlessly syncing to your PC – Bluetooth for connecting to your car or Bluetooth headphones. They are also introducing the ability to look at your pictures by folder or date, and the ability to do multiple selections via two finger tap and take actions on your selection. Also there is now a podcast app which let’s you browse, subscribe, and wirelessly download podcasts. Pick of the crop for me is the WiFi music sync. With the new Desktop App you will be able to sync your whole music catalog, or just tag songs for a later sync. So when you’re out and want a certain song, just tag it and when you get home it’ll be instantly synced.

• Redesigned Homescreen – Featuring notification previews: A tap on the preview bar reveals information about your notifications. Also we got to have more content on the homescreen, individual contacts and bookmarks can be placed on the homescreen following a swipe to the left for showing frequently used items or a swipe to the right to reveal your favorites.

The UI was completely redesigned, following the principle “fresh but familiar”, so it’s remaining familiar to former BlackBerry users. Their main priority was to deliver a great user experience for existing as well as new customers. I really think RIM did a great job from what I’ve seen so far.

Another great thing is the Webkit browser. It features HTML5 support so now there’s the ability to make apps with HTML5 and CSS and then distribute them through App World. It’s not as lame as it may sound because it’s not just a webpage as an app, they can run in the background, access files and media, use location-based services, get notifications, etc. You get the idea.
Something very important for me was that Apps written for earlier versions of BlackBerry OS will run on 6, so we won’t lose what we paid for. I’m really excited now, these features sound so great. It was actually more than I expected, still I think I need to play around with this myself to see if all those features become useful to me in daily life.

Are you excited yet? I sure am! Can’t wait for it to hit Germany. And you lucky guys won’t have to wait that long for the Torch – it goes on sale August 12th for $199 with a two year data plan. Don’t forget to tell us your thoughts in the comments!

via: Engadget