Last week the new BlackBerry Torch was unveiled, and it was described as RIM’s attempt at an “iPhone killer.” It’s pretty commonplace for any newly announced smartphone to be dubbed a potential iPhone killer. None have yet to succeed, and I don’t think the Torch will either. Apple has amassed a following of loyal subjects fans, and the company is such a big part of our culture that I doubt any one phone can live up to that kind of expectation.

However, a few things about the Torch that I really like are the slide out physical keyboard and the “universal feed” feature, which provides a combined stream of updates from email, text messages, calendar items and social networks. It reminds me of a concept that Teehan+Lax put together last year for a new iPhone home screen (below). I think this would work great as an alternate configurable home screen and I hope that Apple will implement something like this someday!