Blackberry Reviews

The Blackberry 8900 is the next generation model of the Curve series of RIM. The Curve 8900 was the most eagerly awaited model of the successful 8300 series. This model of the smart phone was first released with the T-mobile in Germany and now recently in America. As this product was released when the Christmas and New Year’s Eve was round the corner, it can be said as a great Christmas gift from RIM.

Design:

Starting with the appearance and form factor, it is a very thin candy bar with its dimensions being 109×60x13.5mm. The previous Curve models were comfortable too but this has an improved design, providing you with more of a feel good factor. Blackberry Curve 8900 is lighter weighing just 109grams. This Curve model has a great style too. This appealing style of the Curve 8900 promises a good look in your hands. The silver linings that were dominant on the Blackberry Bold which were susceptible to scratches were absent in Curve 8900 making its architecture more solid. The idea of concealing the camera is a better choice as it avoids dust and dirt.

The phone’s body still being made out of plastic, RIM used a variety of finishes and paints in order to provide the phone with more durability. In this case, RIM has provided Curve with a metallic paint which gives it a modern outlook.

The Blackberry Curve does have the battery cover mechanism which allows you to easily remove and replace your battery. You might as well feel that the SIM and the memory card slots are placed in awkward position but, if you are already a user of any other Blackberry models, you will not find it tough. The Curve is designed in such a way that you can remove your SIM only after you remove your battery though it is not present beneath the battery.

An external slot for the media card would have been better as in the case of the Bold and the pearl series of the Blackberry. Since media card is something that people do not change more frequently, accessing it via the easy latch mechanism of the battery door must not be an issue of concern. Fiddling with the media card was not that easy with the Bold version of the device.

Succeeding the pearl flip and Storm, the Blackberry Curve 8900 phone has switched from the mini USB to the micro USB with its port being located in the lower right side of the device, previously in the upper left.

Display:

The full TFT LCD screen of Blackberry Bold was highly appreciated for its brilliant display capability and resolution. RIM has not compromised its display quality with Curve 8900 too. The SmartPhone comes with a resolution of 480X360 pixels which is higher than that of the Bold. The colours are vibrant and the amount of contrast exhibited between each of the shades defines the usage of high resolution.

Keyboard:

Let’s move to the most important issue of the Blackberry phones, yes, as you guessed, it’s about the keyboard. The keyboard might feel tiny in the beginning but once you have started using it, you would get used to it quickly. The performance and the ease of use of the keyboard are so good that this keyboard can be easily named as the best QWERTY keyboard in the SmartPhones that are currently available in the market. On the other side, it does inherit the shaky nature of its predecessor models. Though it is not as shaky as the original Curve, yet it can be felt. If you are a frequent texter, the clacking sound may annoy you, but others need not worry much. The comfort factor with the keyboard is good, even if you are having large fingers, the keyboard does justice.

The keyboard is certainly backlit and the numbers are highlighted in red, rather than the usual white. The overall layout is very simple and spacious. The general navigational keys include the call and end keys, a back button, a menu shortcut key and a trackball navigator.

Trackball:

On moving on to the notorious trackball, it is designed in a way that it’s hard to get dirty and does feel much smoother. You might get the feel that the device responds very quickly to your scrolling actions with the trackball, but the credit of this speed goes to the Curve 8900’s 528 MHZ processor which allows the OS to operate efficiently. The size of the ball remains the same but the material of the ball does differ in a positive way. The common issue of the building up of dirt is addressed in the Curve 8900’s trackball and will be free of any other issues. The screen lock button is conveniently placed on the top.

Camera:

The Curve 8900 sports a 3.5 mega pixel camera which is a welcome up-gradation from the two Meg Pix in the other two 8300 series. The Blackberry’s camera cannot be completely relied on for any precious moments, but is a one without much of issues if you want to snap a quick one. It does have the autofocus capability and LED flash and is neatly protected under a class cover. With the current trend being the 5 Mega Pixel, RIM could have considered it for its fabulous Curve.

Performance:

When it comes to the device’s performance, it responds swiftly to all our actions. This characteristic of a Blackberry mobile is not surprising as we have seen, the other models of RIM also posses this performance factor. The one area that RIM has to still improve with is the browser speed.

Lack of 3G:

RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 lacks the 3G facility. This might be not a big issue for some but folks, who got used to it and surf a lot, will find the 3Glessness disgusting. But still, we do not feel this as a big issue as RIM’s email client is optimised in a great way. The GPS and Wi-Fi is still a part of the phone along with the full Bluetooth 2.0. The Wi-Fi comes with the UMA support which allows you to make unlimited calls over a Wi-Fi network.

Operating system:

The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 SmartPhone is currently shipped with the Operating System of version 4.6.1.94. This OS has helped RIM regain its faith that it had lost to the OS’s of Bold and Storm. The OS is complete and does no leave you with any unknown application errors. As we did mention earlier, the OS is very responsive and the navigation give you a glide feel. With the latest OS, the user interface has certainly improved, but one very minor complaint that can be very well felt is that, most of the icons look alike which might lead to some confusions.

The Noise cancellation system:

As an icing on the cake, RIM has implemented the noise cancellation system. This system is said to improve the voice clarity and certainly does work. This system is implemented by placing a second microphone on the rear side of the phone that picks up the background sound and the inbuilt s/w refines it which helps to produce improved voice clarity. The phone does a great job when it comes to the media sound too. Curve 8900 has one internal speaker as that of the Storm. Though Curve’s bass is not as impressive as that of the Bold, the overall media experience with that of the high resolution screen is awesome.

Features:

Another feature that was noticeably included in the Curve 8900 that was absent in the 8300 series is the inclusion of the editing capabilities on Word, Excel, and Power Point via the Data Viz’s Document to Go Suite. The Curve has only the standard edition that is preloaded in it, but it has to be upgraded with the premium edition in order to open the new edition. As any other SmartPhones, the Blackberry does come with the other personal management tools such as, calendar, task list, voice recorder, memo pad etc. We did notice that some of the third party applications that are compatible with the former Curve series are not compatible with 8900.

Battery and accessories:

RIM has not compromised with Curve’s battery quality too. The phone has a breath taking 5.5 hours of talk time and 19 days of standby time. The Curve 8900 comes with a USB cable, a travel charger, a headset, software CD, a 256MB microSD card and an information booklet.

Verdict:

Now with an overall positive review, we certainly recommend Blackberry Curve 8900. In short, a few words that describes Curve 8900 is, stylish small design, swift OS, smartly designed keyboard, brilliant display, a full HTML browser and good speakers, which almost covers everything that a normal user expects out of their SmartPhone. As you can see the Blackberry Curve 8900 is not just an incremental improvement to the 8300 series. It has raised its head in a numerous issues. Yet, if you are too used to 3G, this might not be your phone of choice.

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