Design:

A typical blackberry:

Design wise, the BlackBerry Curve 3G  9300 Smartphone looks no different than just another BlackBerry handset. It sports a full QWERTY keyboard that sits below a 2.4″ display, with the 2 megapixel camera on the rear. There is nothing much new to see on the BlackBerry Curve 3G. The famous physical Qwerty keyboard sits in a very sensible looking chassis with curvy corners in textured back. The chrome effect border panel houses the 480 x 360 pixels resolution LCD screen and a series of flush buttons alongside the optical track pad. The top panel features the Curve 3G’s media controls including play or pause, skip forwards and skip back. Sporting  BlackBerry’s distinctive QWERTY keyboard and optical track pad, the Curve 3G 9300 has the same mould of its predecessor Curve handsets like the BlackBerry Curve 8900, as well as posing as the younger sibling of the popular BlackBerry Bold 9700.

The keyboard:

The BlackBerry Curve 9300 3G’s physical QWERTY keyboard is good, but it is not the best. Although its raised buttons are preferable to the flat slide out keyboards found on the phones like the Motorola Milestone and Samsung Genio Slide, it is more spacious than the slider on the new BlackBerry 9800 and the Curve 3G lacks the sharply angled keys of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and is a little easier to fudge. We found you have to be quite careful to hit the right keys, although in time this will become easier as you get accustomed to it. Automatic text correction are generally intuitive, saving you the frustration garnered by the iPhone, for instance, which militantly corrects intentional mistakes and does not allow for context when correcting punctuation. Potty mouths will be glad to hear you can swear away to your heart’s content on the BlackBerry Curve 3G.

The Optical Trackpad:

The optical track pad gives you more freedom to move the cursor around the web page than a D pad would, although it did tend to be overly responsive, making selecting a little link a real hassle. It also comes in handy when you want to select text to copy and paste on the BlackBerry Curve 3G, as you can grab massive chunks of text in one quick swipe.

Connectivity:

It is often a little easier on the headphone connection if it is located on the top or bottom of the handset; particularly if you will be storing the handset in a pocket. You might think, given the location of the media playback controls on the top pane of the BlackBerry Curve 3G, this might have been a sensible place for the headphone jack too. Since it is a 3.5mm connector, you will have the freedom to use a wide range of headphones.

Moving on to the name game of connectivity, the BlackBerry Curve 9300 phone offers Wi-Fi and GPS along with 3G network that RIM has included for namesake.

User Interface:

If you had used the BlackBerry OS 5 handset previously, then you will be right at home on the BlackBerry Curve 3G’s interface. The home screen icons can be customised to be made entirely of your most uses apps, functions and web shortcuts. Additionally, the entire main menu is easy to organise into folders. This user interface shares numerous similarities to Windows desktop PC software. Though, the menu is made up of rows of icons, there are webs of text based menus to navigate through within the applications. They are made up of options to adjust settings, carry out functions and kill applications. These menus can be intimidating for those who are new to the whole BlackBerry experience, as it can be quite confusing to be faced with an endless list of options when all you want to do is, for instance, write a new text message.

Ease of use:

Because of these menu webs, it is not as easy an interface to get to grips with as those of iOS devices like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3G, but there are comparisons to be drawn with the Android handsets like the HTC Wildfire. The good news is that, the level of customisation is lower, but the basic principle of easy access to your favourite applications is the same. And, it is worth noting that the OS will be updated in the near future, so you will be able to have a greater home screen customisation to fiddle with. While the multiple home screens will give you more space, you will be able to assign widgets as opposed to the app launching shortcuts.

Calling:

Many of the standard functions of the Curve 9300 phone are extremely easy to launch. To make a call you can either hit the call button, or simply start typing a number or name of a contact from the home screen, and then it is just a case of selecting the one you are after and hitting ‘Call’ or the BlackBerry button to bring up the menu of options including SMS, MMS and email. Yet another handy option for the time strapped super caller is to assign speed-dial keys. With a full QWERTY keyboard at your disposal, you have over twenty six buttons to play with, although A, Q and W are already assigned to the other essential handset functions  like lock keys, change profile to vibrate and call voicemail respectively.

Messaging difficulty:

The only thing that seems to be overly complicated on most BlackBerry handsets, though, is when you have launch a new email or SMS message. Instead of just going into your inbox and being presented with an obvious option to compose a new message, you have to launch the internal menu by hitting the BlackBerry button, then scroll down through the list of options until you find an option reading ‘Compose SMS’. This just seems like a couple of steps too many, especially for such a straightforward task. We should note that you could also launch an SMS to a specific contact from within the address book although this might not come as naturally to anyone making the leap from a 90’s phone to a smart one.

Features:

BlackBerry App World:

By offering 3G connectivity as well as Wi-Fi, the handset promises fast internet browsing while apps and themes can be easily downloaded from the BlackBerry App World. You will be able to launch the BlackBerry App World, from within the phone’s menu or by finding it in the browser. This gives you access to hundreds of downloadable apps. You will also be able to find BlackBerry themes, which can be customised with the BlackBerry Curve 3G even further. You can also purchase themes from designers or build your own, using different fonts, background images, ringtones and the ilk. For social butterflies, there are solid Facebook and Twitter apps on the Curve 3G, with a decent choice of more from the BlackBerry App World store. BlackBerry apps tend to be more expensive than similar apps on the iPhone or on Android platforms, but there are plenty of free ones too, and they tend to be reliable, however, and there are a lot of rubbish apps too. Downloading applications and themes is very straightforward. Once you have found an app you like the look of, just simply select it in the App World and hit download. You would be wise to do so over Wi-Fi rather than relying on the 3G network, which can be a little slow and unreliable, particularly when downloading large files.

On-board Apps:

The RIM BlackBerry Curve 3G Smartphone does come well-stocked with on-board apps though. Along with the traditional calendar, notebook, clock and calculator apps, you will be able to get going with Windows Live Messenger straight away. There is also a suite of office-based apps – Word To Go for reading and editing word processed documents, Sheet To Go for spreadsheets and Slide To Go which, unsurprisingly deals in slideshows. If you are sentimental about your text messages, then you may appreciate a handy little app called ”Saved Messages” to which you can, save messages that matter to you separately from your inbox. Of course, you will also get an array of BlackBerry games on board the BlackBerry Curve 3G. From the illustrious BrickBreaker to the frustrating WordMole, they will keep you busy on the commute if you forget your book.

The phonebook:

The phone book is a very serious affair. Although you can assign photos to contacts, these don’t show up in the phonebook’s list view, so it’s very text-heavy. We are not able to find an easy way to sync our Facebook contacts with our BlackBerry contacts, which is a little remiss in this day and age; particularly for a youth orientated handset. To compensate it, you will approximately have thousand contact options when setting up new contacts, from nicknames, job titles and home and work addresses, to birthdays and even relevant web pages. As you can imagine, this might be information overkill for the casual user, but if you are syncing the handset with your Outlook account, then much of this data may be automatically saved by the BlackBerry Curve 3G. Grouping contacts into relevant groups is an easy enough job too, one of which can be your favourite contacts if you like. However, it does not make them any easier to access, but if you regularly email or text the same group of people, it could save you a bit of fiddling about. There is no need to enter the contact book at all if you do not fancy it.

Camera:

The camera on the BlackBerry Curve 3G is poor. The two megapixel camera has nothing special about it, and even lacks the flash and auto focus functions that are found on the higher-spec BlackBerry Bold 9700. When you launch the camera app, the only options that you are offered onscreen are to zoom in or out, and take the picture. In order to fiddle around with the limited options, you have to click the BlackBerry button and enter another of those text heavy menus. Here, you will be able to play around with the white balance, picture size and its quality, as well as opt for monochrome or sepia options if you are feeling a bit old school. It is really nice to have the sepia and monochrome options, we suppose, but they do smack of being token options, and almost highlight the limited amount of features the camera offers. To zoom in and out, just roll a finger across the optical track pad.

If you decide to take a snap in a landscape position, then you can use the shutter button on the side of the handset, but if you are after a portrait shot then click the optical trackpad. Unless you are really quite firm with the button, you will find yourself zooming when you already had the shot nicely framed up; this is a real annoyance on several occasions. It is not rocket science to know that the zoomed in images lose a lot of quality. This camera is not too bad at handling colours. While the camera struggles with the close-up shots it handles long shots much better. The images are not massively crisp, either, which is no more than we would expect from a 2-megapixel camera. It is suffice to say, this is not the ideal handset for shutterbugs. The BlackBerry Curve 3G does not do too badly handling a lot of light. As you might expect, it seeps into the whole image, but the dark areas do retain a suitable amount of contrast. It is also worth noting that the 2 megapixel camera lacks the flash, and so, the low-light photography is very much miss and not a whole lot of hit.

Video recording:

Similar to the still camera mode, video recording on the BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300 offers the most basic customisation. The only options provided are between two sizes including normal or a smaller MMS size, and colour effects like normal, black and white or sepia. One of the features we did appreciate, however, is its ability to pause recording then continue. Rather than leaving us with a bunch of little video files needing editing together on a PC. Like the still camera, the video camera’s ability to handle bright colours is not bad, but you do still get that unreal gloss over objects like flowers. Differentiating between similar colours is a bit of a struggle for the BlackBerry Curve 3G. It is a shame that you cannot zoom while filming. You have to decide on your zoom before hitting record, otherwise you will be forced to manually move closer to your subject. Mailing of the videos works fine as long as the file size is not too big, and any video clip over about 30 seconds will need to be transferred by USB instead.

The browser:

The browser on BlackBerry OS 5, which will be running on the BlackBerry Curve 3G at launch, is notoriously rubbish. It is quite slow to open the web pages, even slower to render images, only offers one tab at a time and is generally a bit of a pest to use. Even though the screen puts in a valiant effort to display as much of the webpage as possible on non mobile sites, it ends up offering you a birds’ eye view. By which we mean a view of a load of coloured blobs on a screen. You really have to make good use of the zoom function in order to see smaller images and read any text. Zooming in to get a better view of text tends to be quite smooth, although we were often left with extremely jaggedy pixellated images after a zoom-in. In fact, some websites rendered very pixellated, and even dedicated mobile sites suffer this same fate. Sharing of links is quite easy, and you are given an option for this in the browser’s menu. RIM has also given you the option to send the link in an email, via SMS, MMS or BlackBerry Messenger. The other standard feature is the inclusion of bookmarks, and you can sort these by named folders to keep things tidy.

Messaging:

Moving on to the all important messaging, the Curve 3G has its bases covered. As you might from any handset in the BlackBerry family, the Curve 3G features enviable email capabilities and BlackBerry Messenger for instant messaging other BlackBerry users for next to nothing. All the messaging options including the traditional SMS, MMS and email is very easy to set up, having it integrated into the handset at every opportunity. You also have the option to set the default option for each contact to be email rather than calling, if you wish to do so. We do not have to remind you that the BlackBerry handsets have always excelled at email. Setting up a webmail account is as easy as inputting your address and password. The options include Gmail, Yahoo and Windows Live addresses. As and when you set up your email addresses, you will be able to opt to have your contacts for each synced with your address book. As with most of the other BlackBerry handsets, including the Bold 9700, you have the option for your SMS and MMS messages to be routed to a universal inbox that also receives emails from each of your accounts. This makes it easy to check all your accounts at once, although it can be a little annoying if you are not sure which account has received which messages.

Some of the other killer messaging functions in the Curve 3G are the ones that all other BlackBerry handsets offer, including the BlackBerry Messenger or, as the kids call it, BBM. This is a real boon, especially for the cash strapped user; you will be able to save your text messaging pennies for the friend who do not own a Blackberry and BBM other BlackBerry users for no charge if you are on a BlackBerry plan. If you have plans of moving to the BlackBerry Curve 3G from another BlackBerry handset using the same SIM, the Curve 3G will set up your existing account and disable the one on the old handset.

Backup:

Gone are the days when you will not be able to use BlackBerry Desktop Manager with Apple Mac computers, now you can quite happily back-up, restore and sync your BlackBerry Curve 3G, even if you are completely without any PC. The software is pretty straightforward to use, much easier than the complicated, non-intuitive efforts from the likes of LG and Samsung. You can pick what playlists to sync to your BlackBerry Curve 3G in an iTunes-like interface likewise with calendar events, contacts, notes and tasks. Creating a backup file is just a process of two clicks, and if you are in the secret service or just a bit paranoid, then you can encrypt your essential data from within the Manager. It is really disappointing that the Desktop Manager does not include a quick and easy way to import your images and videos, though, and there is no overview of your applications already stored on the handset.

Music playback:

BlackBerry OS 5 is not known for its brilliance in the media arena. While the BlackBerry Curve 3G does display track information and album artwork, the music player is very basic. It does offer you the option to shuffle or continuously play albums, artists and tracks, however. The other notable features in the field of multimedia are the ability to either build your own playlists or command the BlackBerry Curve 3G to create an automatic playlist featuring artists of your choosing. There is no FM radio available, so have to make sure you have plenty of music tracks to listen to. The music quality is average even through the high quality Sennheiser in-ear headphones; but be happy that it is at least than the BlackBerry Curve 3G’s built-in speaker, which is tinny and awful. You can also control the media player by using the buttons on the top of the handset. This controls both the audio and video players.The audio files are supported include MP3, AMR-NB, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, Flac, Ogg Vorbis.

Video playback:

The Video playback is not particularly brilliant quality on that 320 x 240 pixel screen, but the video player is quite nippy, and it skips happily between clips. If you do not have much stored on the handset, you can visit YouTube within the mobile browser; we would recommend sticking to the Wi-Fi to do this. The video formats supported on the BlackBerry Curve 9300 3G Phone include MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV9. The image gallery displays all your photos in a pleasing thumbnail layout, but viewing them on such a small, low-quality screen is not exactly satisfying. Uploading images to Facebook and other social networking apps is very simple, there is an option in the internal menu for that. However, there is no such option for sending videos to social networks though. You have to share them via the traditional way of email or Bluetooth. It is true that this is not the best handset for anyone looking to video blog on the go. If that is the case, we would point you in the direction of the iPhone 4 for its front-facing camera, or the Sony Ericsson Vivaz which records in HD and makes sharing videos super easy.

Maps:

The native Google Maps app on board the BlackBerry Curve 3G is not the worst we have seen. A recent update has vastly improved matters. Getting directions between locations has suddenly become much easier; it is just a matter of simply filling in clearly marked boxes with your destination and locations. Although the maps are accurate and much easier to use  after the all important update, the maps could still be a little slow to load when you are out and about and relying on the 3G network. The compass, however, is brilliant; it is quick, accurate and easy to navigate by. It is just as well that Google Maps come pre-loaded, given the monstrousness of BlackBerry’s own native maps app, which is clunky, confusing, slow and generally makes life difficult for the user.

Performance:

Call quality:

The sound quality is quite impressive with the BlackBerry Curve 9300 Smartphone. The voices are quite clear and easily audible to both parties. The handsets of mid and lower price range suffers a lot on sound quality ; the Nokia X6, for example, is atrocious, and even high end handsets like the iPhone 4, as we know, can suffer on mobile-to-mobile calls. So it is great to see that RIM has not skimped on the BlackBerry Curve 3G. The reason for the good sound quality might have been down to great reception. The 3G reception has full bars most of the time.

Connectivity:

Using the 3G in areas of good reception is a breeze. When the signal is full, downloading is a quick and easy matter, browsing the web was not too painful, social networking apps updated quickly and emails were in and out of our inboxes like hipsters to a Starbucks. Too bad, that as soon as signal drops a notch, the handset becomes a little unstable; it becomes very frustrating and unreliable. Luckily the Wi-Fi fares much better, there are no problems maintaining a signal, and web based services are notably quicker. The Bluetooth connection is also fine, and the BlackBerry Curve 3G does offer A2DP connectivity, so you should be able to use wireless headphones with no problems.

Battery:

The Blackberry Curve 9300 3G Phone lasts two full days on one full battery charge, and it gets very touch-and-go towards the end of day two. It is just about in line with what RIM has stated for the handset’s battery life; it offers 4.5 hours of talk time, 29 hours of music playback or 19 days of standby time. Speaking physically, the battery is tiny, which no doubt helps the BlackBerry Curve 3G retain its low weight.

Box contents:

The box and accessories are pure RIM. A charger with UK/EU adaptors, stereo headset, data cable and a user guide.

Warranty:

The BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300 comes with 1 year warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

Like its fellow Curve handsets, the BlackBerry Curve 3G is one of RIM’s highly capable handsets aimed at a more youthful, fun-loving consumer than the traditional business customer. It is quite similar to the rest of the Curve range, including the BlackBerry Curve 8500 with which it shares its external media controls. The design is slightly updated, though, and the 3G connectivity gives it an edge. The BlackBerry OS 6 update, on its way to the handset in the coming months, will set it apart from older models like the rest of the BlackBerry Curve range. You can find the Curve 3G online for free on a £20-a-month, 24-month contract. You can also pick it up for around £280 SIM-free.

The BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300 is quite a decent smart phone. Its new QWERTY keyboard is likable, though it is not as good as the Bold 7000. Without any questions, the messaging and email tools of this BlackBerry are top notch. The call quality and reception is just top notch. With the BlackBerry OS 6 upgrade imminent, the interface can only get better, and we are looking forward to advanced media features, meaning we can take full advantage of the physical media buttons atop the Curve 3G. On the other hand, the screen has a comparatively low resolution is one of the ways that RIM is able to keep the cost of the handset down, but for media fanatics it just will not cut it. The 2 megapixel camera is woefully restrictive. Similarly, the clunkiness of the menu system and the onboard browser will frustrate until you can upgrade the software. For a mid range handset, the BlackBerry Curve 3G stands up well. If you are after an email machine with occasional web browsing and a spot of media playback, then it will suit you down to the ground without costing you a fortune and with BlackBerry OS 6 just around the corner, things can only get better.

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BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300 Smartphone - Technical Specification Table

If we were playing the game of word association, it would not be rocket science to determine that the word Blackberry will be closely followed by the words QWERTY and business. It has been like that since RIM had entered the market, rarely erring from the QWERTY keyboard, the functional design mode; except for the Storm range, that has not really changed the game. This is the stereotype that RIM has finally broken with the latest consumer friendly Pearl 3G 9105. To be crisp, it is a lean, mean email machine of Blackberry family.

Design:

A Slim and Sleek Blackberry!

The Blackberry Pearl 3G 9105 is really ‘models of this era’ like slim. For the sake of comparison, let us say that the Blackberry Bold 9000 will easily swallow it up whole and still have a lot of room for an old fashioned stodgy dessert. Or, if you want the specifics, that will be (H x W x D) 108 x 50 x 13.3 mm and weighs just 93 grams, so this is the rare Blackberry that will slip into any pocket or bag with ease. This model is not short of style or clever design touches either. The device sits comfortably in hands, thanks to its slightly curved profile.

Tiny miny display:

The Pearl 3G 9105 has a rather small 2.2″ display of resolution 360 x 400 pixels. As you can see, it is not the greatest in terms of space, especially in this era of mammoth touchscreens, but it is not necessarily a hindrance. It all depends on how you are using the phone; you will see more on this point as we go.

Track Pad:

The trackpad has a flat surface and responds to your touch like a trackpad on a laptop. Its insane sensitivity makes up for its tiny size. It also makes the phone easier to pop into a pocket, since it does not stick out from the body and get gunged up with dirt and crud.

Ports and Connectivity:

The 3G 9105 smartphone has a flush keyboard just below the on/off buttons, menu controls and optical trackpad. There are the shortcut buttons on the side as raised lumps for quick access to the voice controls and camera functions. Also housed on the side is the mini USB slot and headphone connector, while the top hosts direct controls for the media player, blending into the design so much that you just might miss them if you were not forewarned. On the downside, there is no quick access to the microSD card slot; that involves flipping the back off and squeezing it in above the battery. With the flimsy construction of the rear, it is just something that you will not want to be doing often, or in hurry. You will find the camera of this Blackberry at the side of the Pearl logo on the rear.

User Interface:

The BlackBerry user interface is starting to look rather dated. It also takes some getting used to if you have never used a BlackBerry before, because it is packed with thousands of options. But, once you have had some practice, it is easy to navigate around, especially with the very responsive optical trackpad that has replaced the traditional BlackBerry trackball. With the Blackberry OS 5.0 employed, the interface of the Pearl 3G is pretty much everything that you can expect from a Blackberry of you have used one before, with just a bit more of added speed. If you were not a Blackberry consumer, let us explain.

Menu System:

The Pearl 3G 9105 Phone from RIM has an icon driven menu system that can be accessed using the optional trackpad. You will be able to quickly flick through the icons on the screen, and select the one that you are looking for. This is a method that has stood the test of time, and with the new trackpad, it is much improved from the temperamental ball. Around 20 icons will fit onto the Home screen without the need to scroll the page, but if scrolling is good with you, you can have as many as you require. Moving icons is quite simple, just click the Menu button for a range of options to move, delete or hide icons. For instance, if you download anything new online or from BlackBerry App World, icons for the app will appear in your ‘Downloads’ folder. Just move the new icon to the homepage via a selection from the Menu key and you can access it easily. Likewise, if you get tired of something or just do not need it, you have the options of moving it off the Homescreen, hiding it or deleting it.

Zen:

When the Pearl 3G is switched on, by default, offers access to your most used functions, and this feature is known as the Zen. The defaults include mail, SMS, contacts, Blackberry Messenger and Facebook. Of course, you also get the option to replace them; all that you have to do is, just hit the Menu button again and swap it around in your options. There are different profiles already preset, but you can spend time tinkering with the different tones for an individual fit. It might take you some time too; the Pearl 3G is packed with sounds and ringtones, with the option of using your own music too. If we have anything to complain about Blackberry’s interface, it is just that it lacks quick access via the screen to the media functions. The top controls on the case are fine once you are in, but getting in is a real pain. And, this is just not the issue with this Blackberry Pearl, it is a wider Blackberry issue. Perhaps, because for RIM, media has always been down the priority list for business devices; but, for the non-business devices like the Pearl 3G, it should have been better.

Speedy:

As we had mentioned earlier, this is a time served interface and is against some of the more whizzy 3D efforts in the market, we accept that the Blackberry OS looks a bit tired and dated. But, what it lacks in style, it makes up for in functionality. Just within minutes of booting it up, you will be flying around the menu like pro. Setting up the Pearl is quite simple; as with most devices of today, pretty much everything is wizard driven, from getting the WiFi connected to creating new email accounts. It is all a matter of following simple steps.

Features:

Does the small package mean fewer features? Forget it. This Blackberry Pearl 9105 3G Network supported Phone model almost creaks with features including GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and video recording, a well featured media player and an optical trackpad too. The Pearl 3G has a lot in common with its bulkier sibling the Blackberry Bold 9700, that runs on Blackberry OS 5.0 and the same 642Mhz processor, which is again notably quicker. Of course, 3G is the most welcome addition along with a much faster browsing experience and finally, yes, finally it supports the most wanted WiFi. The model also supports multitasking, social networking for the likes of Facebook and Twitter as standard and, what is a Blackberry without its all-powerful Blackberry email and messaging. Overall, this Pearl 3G is RIM’s special kid just without the QWERTY, replaced by RIM’s SureType technology for inputting your text.

Blackberry App World:

All that is just the tip of the iceberg; the Blackberry App world has been growing very steadily over the past year. And, though it is not up there with Apple’s App Store, it offers a good range of apps and utilities, which in turn makes your Pearl 3G that little bit more flexible. So, if you have got your handset and want to grab some extra apps, including the ones that we have discussed in the review, Blackberry App World is the place where you have to land. This hanset based store mixes free and premium apps all that are available to browse and download with reviews from users. As we just mentioned, this store is not the biggest or the best app store around, but it certainly does the given job well, enabling you to customise your phone for next to nothing if you do clever shopping. We recommend you to check it out as soon as you have got your handset charged up.

Contacts:

Coming to adding contacts, the Pearl 3G has it all and more. It uses the same contacts system as your average business friendly Blackberry; you might be a little bit daunted while adding a friend. After all, does your best mate really have six phone numbers, two fax numbers, a pager, two emails, a company and a job title? Of course not! Just stick in a name, number and email, just those details will show on the completed page. But if your friends ever do take over the world, there’s room to expand the entry. Google Sync has not been included as default, however, if you happen to be a Google user, you can always download the application. It will copy all of your friends and contacts into your BlackBerry contacts, keeping it updated as they change, and hence, save your fingers several weeks of typing duty.

Overall, when it comes to organising your contacts, this Blackberry 9105 is as good as any other blackberry. But, when it comes to call quality on this particular model, it could have been better.

Messaging:

SMS and MMS messaging on the Pearl 3G 9105 mobile phone is just straightforward. Though it lacks the iconic QWERTY keyboard, text messaging is easy enough on the minimal keypad. All that you have to do is, select your contact, type the message, add the smilies that we all fancy, and then just send it away. There are features available for checking the spelling if you are feeling pedantic and you can also see any messages that are sent or received in the email like SMS folder. Sending MMS is just as easy; take a photo, select a contact, select the size or quality you wish to send and it goes. What more can you ask?

Email:

Well, after all it is the Blackberry. If it does not do the email well, there is simply no hope for it. setting up an email account is just a breeze. Whether it is a webmail account or something PC-based, just head to the email wizard, enter your account details and the Pearl 3G will set it up and, when available, work with your inbox to push emails to your handset when they arrive, so you are free to view, delete, forward or reply as the mood takes you. Delete from your phone and it goes from your inbox elsewhere too. It is the reason why businessmen love a BlackBerry and if you lead a busy life, it should help you too. You can add as many email accounts as you like to the phone, which you can oversee from one message inbox or from each individual address folder. Indeed, if you do use multiple boxes, you can add different tones for each account, just like you can with people in your contacts directory.

SureType Technology:

The only issue that the Blackberry 3G had was the SureType technology. Most BlackBerry devices have a QWERTY keyboard, so banging out a long email is not much different to using a laptop. It is just smaller. With the Pearl 3G, the keyboard is more like a traditional phone to fit the profile of the handset, but it also means a different way of text input. SureType is a form of predictive text, constantly second guessing your word choice, as well as spell checking as you go. Like predictive text, it is both helpful and frustrating at the same time. Once you get the hang of it, you should be able to fire out emails at a fair rate of speed, but if you have not used it before, be prepared for some very frustrating days and emails taking longer than writing and posting a letter, especially if they are beyond a couple of lines of text. It might make you regret buying the handset, but stick with it the fact that it learns from your more commonly typed words really does add speed in the medium term.

Messaging:

One of the highlight selling features of the Blackberry is its messenger, but if it works for you totally depends on the number of friends you have with the same make of device. It is quite simple to use, just enter the email address of your other buddy with the Blackberry and, once they approve of you, there you are, instant messaging. Just type in a message to your contact or multiple group contacts like you would with any other messaging app, with BB Messenger informing you when the message lands. It is great if you have BlackBerry-based friends. If not, prepare to gaze at an empty screen. This is also where the BlackBerry App World comes in to play. Other messaging tools are also available to download, including Google Talk, so if you are the first to go down the BlackBerry route, you will not be all alone. And who knows? Your mates might be impressed enough with your handset to buy one too.

Browsing in Pearl 3G 9105:

The standard blackberry browser has never been everybody’s cup of tea, all too often having issues with rendering pages and in many cases, taking too much time to download content. RIM might just have started to deal with the problem, prior to actually bringing out a WebKit based browser. As you can see, we have tested and a number of Blackberry devices and they always had some pages that the device just does not like. Surprisingly, this time there were no websites in this list and all of our temperamental pages and some other reliable content passed out with flying colours. However, there are a couple of disadvantages too: first of all, the small screen of the Pearl 3G makes the zoom function on the browser your best friend when it comes to web content. It will zoom in on the detail, but when you have got a busy or text-heavy page, constantly having to zoom is a real pain. Secondly, that speedy loading is possible only when you have got a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. When you lose that, the page load times increase significantly. What took seconds suddenly takes minutes. We will look more at the connectivity of the Pearl 3G later on.

Social Networking:

The Blackberry range has always had some very decent apps for all of the main social networks. There are two included in the Pearl 9105 which are standard; there is no MySpace, but in 2010, are you really surprised? The Twitter app had recently gone official in the RIM Blackberry, and we also have to admit that it works like a dream, that integrates so well with the wider Blackberry messaging system. If you are Twitter freak, you must know well what you might expect: a box for your message, a screen to view your messages of those you follow, complete with avatars and a row of icons for everything from replies to people search. If someone sends you a direct message, it drops in your main inbox just like a mail; a nice touch. Overall, it is a well thought out app that is just a breeze to use on the Pearl 3G 9105.

The good old Facebook is also represented in the Pearl 3G and is a very decent app to be kept updated. Just log in and you will be greeted by your latest news feeds, along with options with comment or like an update, upload an image, send message or even write on a wall; it has pretty much everything you might expect. It is true that the app looks a little bit basic and a bit cramped on the small screen, but if you manage to deal with it or simply do not mind, this Facebook App in offer is more than adequate.

GPS:

GPS on a smart phone is always a welcome addition and the Blackberry Maps that has been included in the Pearl 3G 9105 is reasonable for finding your way around the city. It picks up a satellite in just seconds, pinpointing our location and also panning around the area. Please do keep in mind that it is just a basic mapping included and do not expect your in-car unit to give the boot and replace it with this one. That said, if you happen to be lost in a city, it will offer you a helping hand. The good news here is that, Google maps is available as a free download for the Blackberry. However, we insist again that it is not going to replace your car sat nav, but it does offer much more detail, and it should possibly one of your first downloads. Apart from that, geo tagging and location finding in apps is a welcome bonus with the GPS on board.

Camera:

Come on! We are in 2010 and a 3.2 megapixel camera is not much to shout about. However, this camera also offers up auto-focus, flash, 2.5x digital zoom and video recording, and this is more than adequate for the job and it is incredibly easy to use. The camera works well with some of the other tools on the handset, and also seems to be offering plenty of options for photo quality and effects, size and geo-tagging of the snaps. With the shortcut buttons available on the side of the handset, it makes it very easy to capture that exciting moment quickly and easily. Sharing the pictures has been made quite simple with apps for some of the major photo sites too the option to email or MMS your snaps, as well as transfer to social networks, all at various sizes and image qualities, dependent on your needs. Just a click of a button brings up a thumbnail gallery too. Shame the camera is not a little better in terms of pixels, but in terms of use, it is hard to fault.

Tools:

As a business handset, the Pearl 3G 9105 has a raft of productivity tools, some of which you might occasionally use like MemoPad, Tasks, Calculator and Password Keeper and there are others that you will seldom, especially with the display so small, like Word To Go, Sheet To Go and Slide-show To Go. The latter set of features are more like just tasters; you can open a Microsoft friendly document with them, but you will not be able to create one without buying the complete package. Yes, it kind of spoils the good name it created with the non-demo games package. There are Voice notes included too, so you will be able to record your ideas on the go. Said that, the playback is very decent too and you can use your voice notes as quirky ring tones too. We liked the alarm app too, as it was more than decent with a clock that fills the screen and offering a loud alarm to get you out of the bed.

Games in 9105 3G:

One feature that all of us secretly look forward in a handset are games; they are always available in handsets and Pearl 3G is no exception. In this set we have a mix of arcade, strategy and cards, including Brickbreaker, Word mole, Trooper Typing, Texas Hold ‘Em King 2, Sodoku and Klondike. Everything is a bit basic, but they are a good mix of games, and above all, they are all full games and not demos; we love that.

Applications:

As you would expect from a device that keeps business on the move, the calendar application included in the Blackberry Pearl 3G is quite an impressive tool. You can break down your tasks in days, weeks or months, view your wider schedule or agenda, organise appointments, set alarms for those appointments when due or in advance, schedule conference calls, invite people to meetings, change time zones. You have got all this in the device and more. Even better, you will be able to sync it up with external tools like Google Calendar, should you and your friends be reliant on that. The entire program is built for the busy businessman, so if you are buying the Pearl 3G as a ’social’ phone, you can be sure it has all bases covered.

Media player:

As we had mentioned earlier, the media player on the RIM Blackberry 3G 9105 is not bad at all; but accessing it is a bit slow and inconvenient. We are not trying to say that it is dead slow, but it is just not instantly accessible as it should be. After a few clicks, and once you start listening to the music, you will realise that it is not bad at all. You will be able to transfer the music via drag and drop or RIM’s own software through PC or Mac and, if tagged, you should be able to drop nicely into the searchable interface and any album art provided will show it too. And, do not forget, those top controls we had mentioned earlier is very useful when you are out and about.

Performance:

Call Quality:

Coming to the call quality, we found the voice calls to be on the quieter side and there was bit of background noise, a slight hiss. Still, we did not experience any complete drops in the network during calls. The Pearl 3G is a mid- to high-end handset and for the money you will be paying, it should be better in terms of making and taking calls. It is slightly frustrating, because everything else in that area is as good as, if not better, than expected. Ring-tones, for example, are loud and there is a number to choose from (with the option of adding your own too) and the ability to assign tones to various contacts is always a nice touch.

Connectivity:

Connectivity wise, the Pearl 3G struggles with 3G reception and to make sure that the problem was not ours; we tested some other models in the same area and found that it was apparently the issue of the model. This is not promising; though what we did is not a scientific test, we worry us slightly. This is something to perhaps check out at your local phone dealer if you are considering a purchase. The WiFi reception was excellent though. It was extremely simple to set up and the Pearl 3G was happy to hop on to the wireless connectivity as and when required. The entire factors put together makes browsing and downloading a much more pleasurable experience. The 9105 also comes with Bluetooth connectivity, which enables you to pair up with a notebook or any other Bluetooth enabled device without any issues, accepting the files quickly and without any issues. Else, if you want to go wired, there is also the mini USB to USB cable to transfer data and media or to just update the operating system.

Camera Performance of Pearl 3G 9105:

The outdoor shots are more than acceptable, capturing most details that you would not have expected out of the mobile camera. The indoors snap is not quite so sharp, even on a very bright day. However, the image is clear and there is no blurring and the colours are reasonably vibrant. As ever, effects will be able to hide a multitude of sins and, when Sephia filter is used, it does increase the quality of the indoor snap. Video is surprisingly good; impressing us in both fields of visual and audio expectations. Again, it can never be a substitute for a dedicated video camera, but for producing web clips, it is hard to complain.

Video Quality:

Video playback tends to suffer from the small screen. If you like the idea of squinting at a 2.2-inch screen for entertainment, it might be for you. It is also good for checking those mini movies you have just shot, but we prefer our video on a larger screen. Videos have a decent amount of clarity, but this is one area where the small and compact nature of the phone really falls down. Let us be honest, you will be on a one-way trip to eye strain if you spend your day watching Hollywood blockbusters on the Pearl’s screen. Good for a short funny a mate has sent you or, indeed, checking out your own clips. For anything more, it really struggles.

Audio Quality:

For its size, the Pearl 3G has a very decent pair of speakers. At full volume, the sound is just beyond what you can expect along with a good deal of clarity; there is no breakup or distortion even at very high volume. Same is the case of the headphones that are more substantial than your average mobile earphones and, for us, offering up a fuller sound than much of the competition too.

Battery Life:

Battery life is one of the major features of any mobile; they can either be a selling point or a turn off. Fortunately, with the Pearl 3G, it has turned out to be a positive, with RIM promising about up to five hours of talk time and 18 days of standby. When compared to the Blackberry Bold 9000 that is literally light years ahead of the game. The claims are very promising and in our tests, after a full charge, we made calls with the Pearl 3G, browsed a few sites, played music and did some instant messaging. We did everything that a person with the Pearl 3G will do and we are happy to conclude that the battery performs really strong.

Warranty:

RIM offers Blackberry Pearl 3G 9105 one year warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

RIM has packed just about every high end Blackberry feature except QWERTY into this small and stylish device called as the Pearl 3G 9105. It offers just about every mobile essential and more, with almost everything functions as it should. And if SureType works for you, this is a very small and convenient way of keeping up with your email correspondence. Call quality is below what we would expect, network coverage was very disappointing for long periods and to be honest, the familiar look of the BlackBerry interface is perhaps an indication that the interface is just a little too long in the tooth. The BlackBerry Pearl 3G is a good quality smartphone that should serve you well, but with just a couple too many issues to make it a highly-recommended one.

An apt alternate to the Pearl 3G will be the Bold 9700, which is pretty much the same, but with a much bigger profile and a full QWERTY keyboard. If you want to check out some of the other smartphones that is not a Blackberry, the Palm Pre Plus has just hit the markets or, if you are looking for one of those revolutionary Androids and touchscreen appeal, we recommend the highly rated HTC Desire or HTC Legend. Of course, there is thing called iPhone, but if you fancy one of those, we recommend the 3GS and not 4.

RIM Blackberry Pearl 3G 9105 - Technical Specification Table

Last Year when Research In Motion (RIM) launched the original BlackBerry Storm, it was their first handset to feature a touch screen (a clickable one at that). Theoretically, it had everything to be successful and was dubbed as the iPhone killer. But it became clear that this attempt fell short: An aging OS, lack of Wi-Fi and the utter failure of the SureType technology (yes, the one that made the screen even more cumbersome to use) .The bugs and other software issues that riddled the BlackBerry Storm were solved thanks to subsequent updates. But the damage was done.  Neither did it ‘kill’ the iPhone nor was able to please BlackBerry fans.

A year later, RIM decided to fix it by redoing the screen and introducing newer Piezo technology to prevent those accidental clicks. It does address most of those things we criticised about the earlier Storm. It is faster, more stable and more accurate while typing. Wi-Fi connectivity is present and the on-board memory has been doubled. In all, this certainly is an improvement over its predecessor. However, it still lags in the areas of Web browsing and faces stiff competition from Samsung Omnia and Motorola Droid. But more importantly will it manage to wash away the bad memories and gain back support from BlackBerry lovers, read the review to find out.

Design:

Resemblance:

When you first hold the Storm 2, you would mistake it for the earlier model. Visually, there is not much of a difference. The overall feel of the device is very much the same. Apart from the slightly sleeker design and the newer navigation buttons, it is identical to its predecessor.  That is a good thing, because the device feels well built. But what caught our attention is the weight of the device. The Storm2 9950 has dimensions of 112.5 x 62 x 13.9 mm and weighs 5 grams more than the predecessor Storm. Although by sheer dimensions it does not seem so, the Storm 2 is noticeably bulkier than many keyboards-less phones. Not the kind of phone you can carry in a tight jeans pocket. The battery door latch mechanism, similar to the one found on the 8520 is welcome. The speaker has moved from the back of the bottom, thus making it easier while you lay down the device.

Controls:

The physical controls are easy to reach and there are handy shortcuts for silent mode and volume. It is wide enough to avoid that cramped feeling one associates with touch screen keyboards. The keys are made of rubber instead of silver (another thing taken cue from the 8520). The largest design difference one would notice is the functional keys present below the screen.  The original Storm had four physical buttons each separated. This time, all these are incorporated right into the screen. The Piezo electric effect is working as we had no problems whatsoever this time. RIM has managed to combine Piezo and capacitive technology in a way that the screen responds only when touched with bare skin.  The BlackBerry storm 2 9550 has an upside when it comes to expansion as it has a removable battery and a microSDHC slot.

Display and the new SurePress technology:

The display, measuring at 3.25 inches with a half VGA (360 x 480) resolution is simply gorgeous. The touch screen also features a built in accelerometer and a proximity sensor that turns off the touch screen when on a phone call to prevent accidental mispresses. But did not the early Storm have the same dimensions? Yes.  The changes made here are pretty subtle; Subtle enough not to be noticeable.  While RIM still calls the touch screen technology of the Storm2 as SurePress, its implementation is entirely different from that of the Storm. The newer SurePress technology makes it easier to click and with multiple input sensors, typing is even more accurate. The screen actually gives an impulse that simulates the feel of a click. Thus, the Storm 9550 does a better job of replicating the feel of an actual keyboard.

Keyboard:

The full QWERTY Keyboard can be used in both portrait and landscape mode and the phone offer auto-correction. And also, the display does not move like it did earlier. The Piezo electric system works far more efficiently as it requires less conscious effort to use. It also allows for key rollover and faster typing. If you would want to capitalize a letter, all you need to do is press the Shift button while typing.  In a regular message, we had to manually type only a few words, which in a way, is better than the original.  While it does take time to get used to actually pushing down to invoke most actions, this necessity involves slowing down of every task on the phone. Typing is relatively slow as one still cannot truly move to the next key before the screen is back into position. This slowdown is a hindrance; it ruins the main advantage of a touch screen being intuitive.  One is always left guessing the phone’s response to one’s behaviour.  While this new technology sets BlackBerry apart, it would take some time to get used to it.

Interface:

An x.0 release indicates reworking of a program in a major way.  It signals a major shift in how things work.  The same can be held true about the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 in a few areas. Inertial (momentum based, that is) scrolling and threaded text messaging are finally supported. These were much necessary additions in a business centric phone such as the BlackBerry.  Auto-correction is also included. It does not work as well as Apple’s or HTC’s but is still an appreciative effort.  The Blackberry 9550 also supports multi touch gestures for copy and pasting by placing a finger at one end to cut/copy and the other at another end to paste. The menu animations are slick and the scrolling smooth. There was little time lag making it the zippiest interface ever.

Features:

Connectivity and Data:

The Storm 9550 is a global device having partners in Europe. The phone is CDMA focused but also supports GSM and EDGE.  The Storm2 also supports Wi-Fi which is welcome. But Wi-Fi does not help much; it only provides a more reliable connection and saves images on 3G fees.  Surfing over Wi-Fi is not really quick as the browser loads all the data and images before displaying unlike the iPhone or HTC Hero where one can start reading and scrolling before the page loads. It also supports Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR and the HSP, HSF, BAP, SPP, A2DP/AVCRP and DUN profiles.

Camera:

Recording video and Photography on the 9550 have remained virtually unchanged. The 3.2 mega pixel camera performed better than the original one. Photos taken by it looked sharp even on a 20 inch desktop monitor and that justifies the one second taken for the auto focus to kick in before the shutter is pressed. The level of detail was impressive even in indoor lighting. But occasionally, the images had some graining to them. One would have to wait for about 3 seconds to take another shot and that is a tolerable wait. The interface has been reworked slightly and the entire image is displayed on screen unlike the Storm when the bottom was cut off with some controls. There are BlackBerry applications that allow you to upload these pictures to Facebook, Flickr or other services.

Video clip footage looked good when played back to full screen on PC. Moving objects looked a bit blurry, but the overall 480 x 352 resolution footage was good enough.

BlackBerry App World:

BlackBerry App World gives users access to over four thousand applications for their phone. While they are more than enough, it is little when compared to over 10000 apps for the Android market and 85000 for the iPhone App store.  There are apps for Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Docs to Go and even Brick Breaker. These apps need to be downloaded on first use and then they are available as shortcuts on the phone. The American Service Provider Verizon has applications such as VZ Navigator, City ID and Visual Voicemail pre- installed. All of these apps have a monthly fee if the user installs them.  Eerily, one needs to have a PayPal account to buy the premium apps.  The best part of the BlackBerry apps is how well they are integrated into the rest of the phone. For example, after downloading the Facebook app, there is an option to upload photos to your profile from the picture library.

GPS:

The Blackberry Storm2 9550 Smartphone is preloaded with the VZ Navigator that was able to create a route between London and Edinburgh in about 15 seconds. We liked the way it showed traffic along the way. Not only can the app perform local searches, but do them also along the way.  The turn to turn directions were loud and there was a significant difference in volume between the instructions and the specific street and locality names.

Messaging:

There have been upgrades in the SMS application; the most notable of those is the threaded text messaging.  So, it becomes easier to follow a conversation that was not conducted through e-mail. A greater sense of control is provided. You can set notifications to repeat for each type of message (SMS, email etc.) for individual contacts. There are more smileys too. The Storm2 9550 features all forms of messaging such as SMS, MMS, and personal email over BIS and BES, IM clients such as GoogleTalk and AIM. They have certainly made better to use thanks to the better keyboard.

Web Browser:

The Web Browser has been reworked to give faster loading times. The earlier Storm took about 50 seconds to load the site of the New York Times while the Storm2 took just 20 seconds. While it was decent enough in the earlier releases, the newer one is better at rendering sites that use AJAX. Even refinements in the touch screen benefits web browsing. Despite more RAM and a fast processor, some tasks feel slow. You still cannot use pinch gestures for zooming as on other phones neither can you open new tabs while browsing. While the overall surfing experience is good, it would be better if RIM integrates a WebKit based browser.

Multimedia:

Multimedia is a segment where the 9550 excels. It has its own media player that has now been broken up and is now visualized as a folder with each component as an independent application. There is 2GB built in memory and a 16GB micro SDHC slot for all its music, pictures and video.  The media player supports MP3, WMA, WMA ProPlus, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+ formats. One can buy tunes online using V Cast Music with Rhapsody.  A cheaper alternative is transferring tracks from a PC. While downloading songs over Wi-Fi is slow, transferring non DRM tunes from a PC to the Storm2 with the BlackBerry Media Sync program is easy.  It is faster to scroll through photos on the Storm2 than its predecessor. The video looks great and the interface is clean. The storm 2 9550 phone supports MPEG4 and WMV video files for playback.

Software:

There is nothing new here. Like always, things are simple and straightforward. It has the capacity to store virtually unlimited amount of contacts and with each contact being able to hold 3 email addresses, 2 work phone numbers, 2 home numbers, a mobile, pager, fax and a BlackBerry PIN number. You can store home and work address as well as birthday dates. These contacts have user definable contacts and each entry can have a custom picture and a ringer.  Lives up to the expectations of a true Business phone, doesn’t it? Like its earlier version, the home screen contact search is missing. While the keyboard is accessible in the full menu, you cannot search the contacts by name or number.  Voice dialling is excellent and is handled by pre-programming the left soft key.

The Calendar is another robust feature. It can be managed either on the phone or a PC. Using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server you can remotely manage and sync it wirelessly.  You can also create appointments and options such as reminder and recurrence are present as well. One can also mark appointments private for extra security. Basic PIM tasks such as Memo Pad and Tasks along with a simple calculator are also available.

Performance:

Call Quality:

We tested the dual mode (CDMA and GSM) RIM BlackBerry Storm and the call quality was good. The audio and voice quality had minimal background noise.  Neither did we experience any dropped calls nor had a problem using an automated voice system. However our callers reported that the voice sounded distorted and activating speakerphone made our voice sound muffed. On the contrary, speakerphone calls sounded clear and loud.  Pairing up using Bluetooth was easy.

The 9550 uses the same processor as the Storm but with increased memory and better software, the phone felt better to use.  The accelerometer was able to change as soon as we rotated the phone. We had no problems whatsoever using applications as we did not encounter any of the performance issues that plagued the Storm.

Battery Life:

Because the Blackberry Storm 9550 is a world phone, the band that is being used affects battery life. We recommend charging once a day as moderate usage will drain most of its charge.  With light to moderate usage, you would likely charge it every other day.  While Talk time is 5 and half hours, it can last 11 days without usage. So, the battery life is pretty decent.

Package:

At first glance, the box that the Storm 9550 comes is of the same design as the earlier Storm, only slightly smaller. They are identical except for the picture of the phone and technical details. The box feels heavier thanks to the additional weight of the Storm 2. Well, whoever cares about the package, what is inside it matters.

What’s in the Box?

The Storm2 ships along with a 16 GB microSD memory card, rechargeable battery, microUSB international charger, USB cable, wired 3.5mm stereo headset, pre installed SIM card, quick reference guide, documentation kit and a global support kit.

Warranty:

There is a warranty of one year provided for the BlackBerry Storm 9550 from the date of purchase.

Verdict:

Despite the similar design and software, the RIM BlackBerry 9550 is not a really bad phone. In fact the phone easily can win the most improved award in the smart phone category.  Many improvements have been incorporated and all the previous problems (lack of Wi-Fi, unnatural scrolling and the screen mechanism) have been solved. The new touch screen is a pleasure to use than its predecessor. The phone is great when it comes to taking calls and viewing email. The increased onboard memory and the new OS make the phone snappier to use.  However, the web browser is poor compared to the one on iPhone and HTC Hero. RIM also has to do a lot of catching up in the application store segment. But the main thing that worries us is how the phone would perform in the market. Most improvements in the phone are to cover up all the faults of Storm2. Mean while, competitors of RIM such as Apple and Android have had superior upgrades, thus outpacing the BlackBerry. Do not get us wrong. The BlackBerry Storm is a great phone that appeals to BlackBerry lovers looking for a touch screen phone. If you want a solid keyboard, Palm Pre, Apple iPhone and HTC Hero are some feasible options.

BlackBerry Storm 9550 Mobile Phone - Technical Specification Table

RIM has also made sure that the absence of its track ball does not affect its fans by including a typical rubberised buttons along with an optional track pad. While the Curve 8250 is facing fierce competition from its rivals, it seems to have made a wise move by incorporating optical track pad. The 8250 has a lot of elements that depart from traditional Blackberrys just beyond the trackpad. Load of features like updated look for the call and end-call keys, a new hidden convenience keys, dedicated set of media keys across the top of the device and a small LED indicator, all compliment each other to position the Curve 8250 to reach itself to the younger market that the Blackberrys have failed to capture.

Design:

Familiar design:

The Blackberry Curve 8250 Smartphone would look instantly familiar to anybody who has used any Curve handset, except for the new addition of the optional track pad which has replaced the company’s iconic mini trackball or Pearl as RIM would like to call it. This smarty has a superior material quality emphasised by its curvy features and hence displays a much sleeker look. While the front fascia of the phone features the usual snazzy finish the rear panel comes in with a smooth finish. The trackpad that was embedded as a replacement for the trackball seems to have increased the reliability of the Curve. Although the design of this model is very similar to that of its predecessors, it measures as (H x W x D) 109 x 60 x 13.9 and weighs just 106 grams.

Touchpad blessing:

As soon as we used the trackpad, we felt that it is an improvement over the ball and have not looked back since. We have been fairly not impressed with the touchpads on PDAs like the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger, but thankfully the one on the 8250 is in a totally different league. The touchpad has been a pleasure to use as it seems to be both accurate and responsive and we really did not miss the old style trackball at all.

The pad has employed similar gestures as the pearl and feels just like the one that you would use on a laptop. Just click on the pad to make a selection, the same way you would do with the trackball. You will also be able to adjust its horizontal and vertical sensitivity to customise the speed at which it zips around the icons on the screen. A disappointment is that the pad does not come with a backlight and is just solid. An improvement that we would be expecting in the future Blackberrys is the ability to scroll by just resting the finger on the edge of the pad; which would offer the ultimate accuracy, ease of use and functionality. We would say that there is very little to criticise the trackpad except for the fact that you have to get used to its speed. RIM representatives have indicated that this new trackpad is likely to be included across all the new curve devices, mainly because of the fact that it has no moving parts and so is less prone to dust and dirt.

Convenience keys:

Yet another departure from the RIM Blackberry Curve 8250 apart from the trackball is the design of convenience keys on the side. RIM has included a rubber strip that wraps around the perimeter of the entire device that encompasses the keys on the sides, which makes the side keys of the 8250 look as though they are protruding from beneath the rubber. Though the chrome trim is missed, it seems to work for the phone. Both the bulging keys and lack of chrome makes the Curve look less delicate and more rugged than the other BlackBerry Phones in the market.

Multimedia keys:

As we had mentioned earlier, three media keys have been included on the top of the device which includes Play/ Pause/ Mute, Next and Previous. These buttons work in conjunction with the music player to aid you through the navigation of music which is a very welcome addition that plays well to the younger market. This version of Curve also features an expandable microSD slot with 1 GB car preloaded. The last physical makeover is that of the Talk, Options, Return and End/Power that makes them look a bit more hipper. As the new trackpad does not stick out from the case like the old one, the four main buttons under the display sit completely flush that gives the handset a much sleeker look than the previous Curve models. The keys are all part of the same top level that the screen is and do not look like individual ones, though they act so. The rear of the phone also sports some of the same rubber that surrounds the perimeter of the phone along with a black plastic piece across most of the back. This plastic is curved quite a bit, which beckons the user in order to spin the phone in a circle which will bring about some irreparable marks from all of spinning.

Small display:

The Curve 8250 sports a 2.64” Thin Film Transistor display of 320 x 240 pixels. The screen supports 65K colours and Quarter Video Graphics Array. All these features have made sure that the display is vivid and colourful. Another thing that we have to admit is that, though 8250’s screen is an upgrade from the original Curve, it does not seem to hold a candle to competitors from its own parents like the Curve 8900, Tour or Bold.

Keyboard:

The Curve 8250 has retained the QWERTY keyboard of the original Curve. If you were just hoping for an escape from the plastic spaced out keys and trade up to a keyboard like that of the 8900 or the Tour, then you are out of luck. The keys may be small, but as they are slightly raised they’re easy to hit with your fingers and thumbs so tapping out emails is not a problem. Overall, the QWERTY keyboard is much easier and reliable without being cramped.

Annoying LED:

One thing that everybody will agree to be annoying in the previous Blackberrys is its blue light that keeps flashing that is very distracting while driving at nights. The good news here is that RIM has solved this issue with the inclusion of a smaller LED indicator which is just about the size of the tip of the pencil.

Features:

Connectivity:

RIM has sensibly included a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so if you do not like the supplied headset, you can always swap it for one of your owns but the downside is that, you will lose the hands-free functionality. Though the addition of the standard headphone jack is very welcome, RIM has annoyingly placed it on the left edge of the phone rather than on the top which means that the lead tends to snag when you take the handset in and out of your pocket.

Connectivity too is a kind of mixed bag. If you are just thinking to hop on to any of the great 3G deals, then just be prepared to be disappointed. On the one hand you get Wi-Fi for fast web browsing at home or when you’re within range of a hotspot, plus Bluetooth for use with car kits or stereo headsets. However, there is no GPS and this is yet another BlackBerry that does not support 3G at a time when it is really difficult to find a smartphone from any other manufacturer that does not feature 3G support. That said, the lack of 3G is not really all that noticeable when you are just using the device for email due to BlackBerry’s clever compression technology. However, it is different story with the web browser as when you are away from a Wi-Fi signal and working over the mobile EDGE network it can be pretty slow to load pages in the browser.

Operating System in Curve 8250:

The default OS of the Blackberry 8250 is OS 4.6.1.259. The basic suite of Blackberry Software includes apps like web browser, address book, calendar and Push e-mail. Like most of the recent RIM models, it also sports audio and video software along with an Office Suite called the DataViz Documents To Go.

Browsing and messaging:

Despite the small display and lack of 3G support, the browser seems to be pretty decent as it is very responsive and easy to navigate using the onscreen cursor through the optical trackpad. Rendering sites is pretty good, but it mucks up the formatting every now and then on complex pages. The messaging features of the 8250 are simply top class. One thing that we found to be consistent throughout its hardware and software design its intensions to appeal to the younger market. This is very much evident by the red and white asterisks that litter notifications section in order to inform the user about the new messages and notifications. This very much resembles the iPhone that makes use of the same colour schemes to indicate few notifications. All these indications clutter up the home screen especially that of the status bar on the top. A great news for those social networking freaks is that, Facebook and MySpace is built-in by default and also offers a slew of IM clients like AIM, Gtalk, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and Blackberry messenger. Last but not the least you will also be delighted to find the Blackberry Maps in the device.

Other than few of the cosmetic updates of notifications, very less of the OS has departed from the other Blackberrys. In certain applications, the phone seemed to hang a bit more than we would expect it to, which was very surprising given that the phone uses 512MHZ processor, which seems like it would be quite plenty.

VOIP:

One of our favourites that T-mobile offers is UMA or as T-Mobile likes to call, HotSpot@Home. This feature offers native VOIP service where WiFi is available. One of the biggest uses of UMA is that, if you are in an area that does not offer a good T-mobile coverage you will be able to jump on WiFi and instantly have crystal clear conversations. When we first tried this feature with the Blackberry Pearl Flip, we encountered some issues in switching between the UMA and EDGE. We found that the switch was much more seamless with this Blackberry and a few times, we also noticed that a call would start in UMA and end in EDGE without dropping at all.

Camera:

There are several styling cues throughout the whole device that it is certainly after that market share that might be interested in iPhone and inclusion of camera seems to be one of them. RIM has equipped Curve 8250 with 2 mega pixel Camera of resolution 1600 x 1200 pixels and also supports Quarter Video Graphics Array with primary lens that is essential for capturing video. Unfortunately, RIM has lowered their game in this area to be on par with iPhone. Though the camera takes decent pictures, it does not have flash like in the iPhone, which is found in almost every other Blackberry camera. The round iPhone-esque lens has been more exposed and subject to dust than the other Blackberry devices. We would have loved to see a decent 3.2 mega pixel auto focus camera that is found in most of the recent phones. Photos taken outdoors in good light look decent, but as the camera lacks a flash or autofocus it really struggles indoors leaving you with dark and noisy photos. The camera can also be used to take videos at a resolution of 320 x 240, but the results look a tad jerky. Video format support covers MPEG4, H.263, H.264, and WMV3. Fun factor has been added to the application with the Photocall feature that enables the user to tag photos to the contacts.

Quad-band compatible:

As the Blackberry Curve 8250 is quad band compatible and hence you can use it in most countries around the world and as with the Blackberrys we have tested in the past, the 8250 too has an excellent call quality. The ear piece offered is loud and clear, the mic is not over directional and even the speakerphone works great that is boosted by the beefier speaker the RIM has used for this model.

Battery life:

One thing that has always been a strength of all the Blackberrys is their long battery life and the Curve 8250 is no different. With a single charge, you will get three full days with some mailing, phone calls and a little bit of browsing. Very impressive!

Verdict:

As we have indicated throughout the review, Blackberry Curve 8250 has several elements that position it to a younger market segment, which is very evident with the rubber outlay around the phone, updated call and end keys and multimedia keys. Though these small changes are notable, they cannot be said as the standout features of the phone. We should admit the optical trackpad is a big step forward for the Blackberrys. The trackpad has made it much easier to use the device and more importantly has made it look sturdy and sleek than the other models with track ball. The shortcomings with the lags in applications and lack of flash have been very well made up by the pad. 8250 is certainly a little light on features, with 3G and GPS the most serious omissions, but the phone still manages to rise above these limitations. It is the combination of its excellent email features, long battery life and easy to use interface that make it so likeable.

If you are looking to upgrade to a T-mobile Blackberry we would normally suggest Blackberry Curve 8900, but with the inclusion of trackpad on the 8250, we would ask you to think twice. The 8250 is just perfect for those who need just more than a standard mobile, but do not have the kind of money to go for an iPhone or the HTC Hero.

Check other Blackberry Curve Smartphones in our website.

Blackberry Curve 8250 Phone - Technical Specification Table

Verizon has launched 2 more firmware updates and we believe this has greatly improved the performance of the device by resolving the bugs and improving general performance. These firmware updates make it a stable device that should please the owners.  Is the device that good even in a closer introspect? Scroll down to find out.

Design:

Simply Stunning:
The Storm looks stunning. The moment you lay your eyes on it, you would realize that a lot of time has gone into designing the phone. It has not strayed far from the usual business phone design but unlike the previous Blackberries the 9530 has a different build quality. It sports a Black casing with silver accent and has a trapezoidal shape with rounded edges.  At 2.4 inches wide by 0.5 inches deep and 44.4 inches tall, it feels a bit wide when you hold it in your hand. It weighs about 5.6 ounces and that is about the average weight of phones in its category. So, the Storm is a well constructed phone with a nice solid feel and a soft touch finish to provide grip. It does not creak or rattle or budge or deform and still feels like a solid business phone.

Simple Layout:
Not only is the casing hard, but the buttons are sturdy as well.  The silver bezel around the phone makes it look gorgeous. The bands are probably made of plastic and not metal and trace the outline of the phone whereas the rest of the surface is glossy black plastic.  The screen dominates the front of the phone and it has four buttons on the bottom:  Phone, Menu, Back and End/Power buttons. It also lacks a trackball navigator and hence allows for easier one handed operation.  On the left side of the device is a convenience key and a micro USB port. RIM has preferred this over the more common mini USB slot for a lower profile of the newer variation. On the right is present another convenience key, a volume rocker and the 3.5 mm headphone jack.  On the back of the casing, you will find the solid aluminum brushed piece with the camera and flash on the plate. The top of the phone has a single LED on the right and the mute keys incorporated on either side.  When compared to the previous models, the hardware and components used in the phone seem superior and this shows its class.

Huge Screen:
The design was awe-inspiring for sure, but the display was altogether another story.  The Touch screen was a reason for it to be in the news, but so is its 3.25 inch VGA display which shows amazing sharpness and brightness. Let the big screen not fool you in to thinking that you have got a 16:9 screen as the phone plays only 4:3. Capable of showing 65000 colours at a resolution of 480 x 360 pixel resolution, it did not impress as much as the BlackBerry Bold did.  Nevertheless, it is still beautiful. One has the ability to adjust fonts, sizes, type and backlighting. There is an accelerometer available which allows one to change the orientation of the screen from landscape to portrait when the phone is tilted from horizontal to a vertical position. Oh, the screen was durable as well and resisted tendencies to get scratched.

Touch Screen:
This was perhaps the place where most of the attention was focused on. Unlike the iPhone and Instinct, the Storm does not just boast of a capacitive touch display, but the screen is also clickable as well. It uses a technology called SurePress which allows you to click the screen down like a mouse button. The main reason to provide this is to hover without selecting or moving an onscreen element and that we have a tendency to click down while navigating or typing on most devices.  That is, when you push the screen down, it would be like pressing down a tactile button.

Virtual Keyboard:
The BlackBerry Storm 9530 features a soft keyboard which can be used not only in portrait mode but also in landscape mode as well. Initially there was only a SureType keyboard available, but with the new upgrades one has the option of a fully fledged QWERTY keyboard. It is not automatic though, you will have to enable it by pressing the BlackBerry Menu and selecting the Enable Full Keyboard option.  The Screen is fairly sensitive and hence, a single simple touch over the item would highlight the item and then you press down to register the action. With all this, we kept forgetting that we could use tapping to do an action.  But here, we realised that having a tactile keyboard would have been better.  Typing long messages was not really easy on the Storm and it gets worse if you have big thumbs.

Minor Niggles:
Yes, the BlackBerry looks great, but we did notice some minor faults we wish would have not been that noticeable. Backlight was leaking through the sides of the phone and this killed the continuity of the design.  When the screen was pressed down and held, it slid down.  Not really huge problems and can be looked over.

Features:

Blackberry OS 4.7:
The OS used on the Phone is similar to the one used in the earlier BlackBerrys notably the Bold. But the reason we are discussing about the UI here is because unlike the previous models this BlackBerry lacks a trackball. Though there is no paradigm shift in the approach, rather the company has added the touch and multi touch functionality to replace the trackball approach. Unlike the iPhone, the Storm’s UI is not customized for touch navigation. Things that the iPhone is good at such as flickering through lists, moving around in a webpage are uncomfortable to do on the Storm. Though the screen seems sensitive enough, the finger cannot be entirely trusted to take control of the device.

No QWERTY:
BlackBerrys are the ultimate phone when it comes to email and messaging.  RIM partly attributes its success to the inclusion of QWERTY keyboards on their phones. You might believe that the inclusion of the clickable touch screen would make things easier. However, we disagree. We were constantly frustrated by the laggy movement and found it difficult to type long messages on the phone. RIM also provides a T9 dictionary which was not able to correct minor errors. All this makes you wish for a QWERTY keypad.

Implementation of the other functions:
Copying and Pasting, a norm on the RIM phones has fully represented here with multi touch functionality. If you want to copy/ paste text, select the beginning and end of a text with 2 fingers and a menu pops up. Too zoom into pages, one can double tap and to back out you will have to use the negative magnifying glass. The technology is great, but we believe that it has a long way to go before it can compete with the iPhone for virtual keyboard domination. If speed is not a concern for you, then the phone is manageable.

Browser:
One area where the Storm seems to be good at is the Web browser. If you have used the Bold’s Web browser, you would know that load times were painful and using it was torturous. In short, totally unusable. The Storm has a better implementation of the browser than its predecessors. Page loading times were fast and navigation was snappier. The scrolling was tolerable and zooming is faster. Highly admirable, but the Mobile Safari and the G1’s web kit based “ Chrome light”  have more advanced features such as multiple tabs.

Messaging and e-mail:
Messaging and email has always been RIM’s stronghold. There are not many changes in this segment, except for a couple of visual effects. The use of screen real estate and selection of fonts seems to be a bit outdated when compared to the iPhone. Reading email was still inconsistent and we found account management simpler. People who were looking for Gmail integration would be disappointed.

Software:
The 4.7 is not a huge improvement over the 4.6 but there are a couple of improvements that were worthy of mention. The Home screen is like a typical BlackBerry experience. There are 2 levels of application screens: The initial home screen allows you to house 8 applications icons of your choice. The second level is a deeper level that displays all your folders and icons. BlackBerry fans used to a real keyboard will be feeling lost here. It also fails to recognise longer presses, shortcuts or find as you type searches on typical RIM devices. There are a couple of tweaks in the OS, the cross fades and swipes of pages are some of them.

Third Party Software:
The Storm 9530 Touch Screen Mobile Phone hardly has any third party software and can be termed nonexistent. The representatives from the company have assured that they have plans to launch their version of the app store. There is a broad selection of applications such as the “To Go” suite that allows viewing and editing of PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents. For more advanced options, one has to buy the premium version.

GPRS:
Verizon VZ Navigator Software provided with the RIM BlackBerry Storm 9530 is not really great to use. The navigator gives spoken turn by turn directions and even incorporates traffic into the narration. Though it worked well, it is not really worth shelling out extra cash for it. There are a lot of options such as movie times, traffic and local search included in it. It was able to garner excellent results in terms of signal reception and tracking.  But, the software was sluggish and abysmally slow.  Alternatives such as Google Maps offer walking directions and transit directions as well.

Other Applications:
The BlackBerry Storm 9530 Smartphone features Visual Voice mail which displays who left you a voice mail and how long the message is. Though it takes about 10 seconds longer than the normal voice mail, it is worth the wait. One can compose a new text/MMS, call back the caller, reply to the caller via SMS or erase a message as well under the Visual Voicemail menu.

Media Player:
The Storm’s inbuilt media player is capable of playing several audio and video formats such as WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV, DivX4, XviD (partial support), and H.263 video clips. There is a search function, playlist function, shuffle and repeat and there is also a full screen mode for video playback. The software CD included Roxio Easy Media Creator which allows you to create MP3s from CDs and add audio tags. The Storm also works with the Media Sync application which means you can load your iTunes library.

Not Compatible with Mac:
The Storm 9530 is not capable of syncing with a Mac. But for Mac users who happen to use BlackBerry’s there is software called PocketMac provided which does a decent job of loading contacts, calendars and etc. Sadly, the software needs an update badly and does not seem to sync data with the Storm. So, you will have shell out extra for Missing Sync to get your Storm synced with your Mac. Considering that the phone is aimed at the iPhone’s market share, it is outrageous that the phone lacks syncing software.

Camera:
The Camera happens to be one of the strong points in the Storm. When selected, the screen serves as the view finder and resting your finger on the camera button displays a white box, which on further pushing turns green and takes your snap. The resolution of the 3.2 megapixel camera was fantastic. The only problem we found was with the shutter speed. It took a great deal of time for the camera to kick in. Things in bright daylight were good, but with the flash, it was hard to get good results. All we expect is faster times to take a snap.

The Camera menus are logically laid out and are user friendly. On the screen are present the approximate number of pictures that can be still taken, zoom level, flash mode and status and the status of location aware pictures. After one takes a picture, there is the photo displayed with several options such as caller ID or the send option. The picture can be uploaded to your Facebook, Flickr, messengers etc.

Video Recording:
The Video camera also has fairly good quality and clear sound. It allows capturing of 320 x 240 with a bit of heavy artifacting. The 8GB memory card provided allows you to store ample amount of video on the phone. There is the option of video light present that allows you to shoot in dim light and can double as a torch light as well.

Accessories Provided:
The RIM BlackBerry Storm 9530 is provided with a healthy set of accessories: A Travel charger with various adapters, a USB Cable, an 8 GB microSD card, a wired headset, a software CD, some reference material and a SIM card if it is under the Verizon Wireless package.

Performance:

Good Call Quality:
The Call quality of the BlackBerry Storm 9530 using the Wireless service was good. There was no noticeable background noise or voice distortion. Neither did we experience any sort of dropped calls during our tests.  The speakerphone did not fare as well as the call quality. There was choppy call quality on both sides and there was a tendency for the words to get cut off. There was also noticeable voice distortion on both ends. Though we were able to carry on full conversations, we did have trouble in catching what the other person said at the first go.

Media Performance:
The music playback through the phone was good and the volume was loud too. The built in headphone jack would allow for an even better sound quality. Though the video performance was good, it was not as quite as astounding as the BlackBerry Bold.  The playback was smooth in spite of more pixilation.  The Web browsing was pleasantly fast thanks to the EV DO Rev network.  The GPS capabilities were great, but the software was a bit sluggish.

Thank the New firmware update:
Verizon’s new update the version 4.7.0.113 was a huge booster to the Storm’s performance.  The software upgrade was downloaded using the desktop manager and the process went smoothly. The biggest improvement noticed was in the accelerometer. The screen orientation was faster and so were response times. Launching applications were better thanks to the response times.

Better BlackBerry:
Thanks to the firmware updates, the BlackBerry Storm 9530 Smartphone with GPS receiver is even more polished. The browser and camera were faster. We did not notice any sort of crashes or freezes. The problem of the phone freezing during income calls or a blank screen while on a call was fixed.

Battery Life:
The Battery of the Storm 9530 is a 1400mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 5 and half hours and up to 15 days of standby time. When we did our full battery drain test, the phone lasted 7 whole hours. With the original OS and moderate usage, the phone lasted a solid 2 days. The newer firmware version (that is the Updated OS) reduced battery drain. Even on using the phone for at good 36 hours, there is still 50 percent charge on it. The .75 update also solves the previous problem of not being able to the phone while being charged. The phone however tended to get a bit warm where the battery is available.

Warranty:

There is a warranty of one year provided on the BlackBerry Storm 9530 from the date of manufacture.

Verdict:

RIM and Verizon have been desperately trying to push the Storm ahead and make it a threat to the iPhone’s dominance. There has been a lot of commercials, leaks, press releases and special events to celebrate the arrival of the Storm. The Storm has a great stylish design, is designed and backed by RIM, has a great camera and is a worthy competitor to the iPhone.  However, here is the hitch; the Storm 9530 is not really as fluid or enjoyable as the iPhone. The considerable lagginess in software and the lack of a decent typing option will turn off several users. But the lack of Wi-Fi is a serious issue and we guess the future version of the Storm will incorporate it. On Paper, the BlackBerry Storm seems as an ideal competitor to the iPhone. Sadly, in Practice, it has some serious glares. Verizon’s firmware updates will solve a major number of them. However, till then let us hope RIM comes up with something better.

Check other Latest Blackberry Reviews in our website.

BlackBerry Storm 9530 Mobile Phone - Technical Specification Table

Pros:

• Sleek Design
• Large Display
• Amazing Connectivity
• Perfect for Email and Messaging
• Decent Applications

Cons:

• Lacks 3G
• Small buttons on the keypad
• Slower than the Bold.

Review:

RIM produces the best and the most successful line of business smart phones in the market today; however, it is still light weight when compared to players like Nokia. But, the first thing that comes to mind when people think of RIM is email. Yes, e-mail. The last decade marked the rise of BlackBerry as the champion device for email while on the go. Today, it has become a need for most professionals who travel a lot.  In 2007, RIM launched the Curve, a phone that was not only used by business professionals, but also by the regular users. 2008 marked the launch of Bold, a more serious attempt at penetrating into the market.  This year, RIM launched the BlackBerry Curve 8900.  A solid addition to the T mobile’s smart phone line up, it replaces the older Curve 8300 series. The phone brings several notable improvements, including a sleeker design, a faster processor and a 3.2 MP camera.  The Curve 8900 is a full QWERTY messaging smartphone with integrated Wi-Fi with UMA support. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the lack of 3G support, something that could have given it a great edge over all its competition. Despite this, it is an amazing phone and is absolutely recommended for both consumers and professionals.

Design:

No surprises:
A typical QWERTY device, there are not many surprises in terms of form factor or design. The Curve 8900 PDA Smartphone looks like all its predecessor BlackBerry handsets except for the half QWERTY models that are slimmer. Whereas the Blackberry Bold was more elegant and classy, the Curve is more sporty and hip looking which would appeal to a wide variety of users. The phone casing is entirely built out of plastic and it reminds you of the Nokia E71. RIM used several finishes and paint applications to make the handset more durable. However, the E71 is built out of metal and weighs 125 odd grams more than the Curve. At 109 x 60 x 13.5 mm, the Curve is about the same size as the original, appreciably much thinner though. The overall build quality of the device is good except the loose fitting rear battery cover.

Display:
The 8900’s display is a beautiful 480 x 380 pixel unit that has a diagonal length of 2.4 inches. Smaller than the Bold, it has more pixel density than the Nokia E71 and runs on a TFT LCD which bundles the resolution along with 65k colours. The display is more legible than the Nokia business phone and it retains more vivid colours when exposed to direct sunlight.

Controls layout:
The BlackBerry layout of controls has 2 call keys, a back and a menu button as well under the screen. The centre piece is the trackball, stunningly black and equally stunning comfortable to use. The keyboard has a four row layout and the num pad is on the left. The side controls allow for easy one handed operation, all keys except the space bar are of the same size. The spacing is sufficient and their shape is very comfortable to use. The keys give a very tactile feedback and the keyboard is adequately backlit.
The left of the BlackBerry has one of the convenience keys that allow you to start the voice dialling, by default and you could change that according to whatever suits your needs.  Another such key is on the right side of the handset below the volume rocker and the 3.5 mm standard audio jack. There is the microUSB slot that allows you to charge your phone.  On the bottom of the phone is the microphone pinhole.

Ports and connectivity:
On the top of the model is the ear piece alongside the BlackBerry logo. On the right side of this is the LED indicator.   Seen it somewhere? Yes, this part of the phone is a replica of the Storm. There are 2 more keys here – one for locking the phone and the other for muting it. The smooth surface might make you miss those keys and the only way you can tell is by feeling them.

Features:

The Interface:
The BlackBerry runs on the BlackBerry OS v4.6 and the interface is no different from the Bold’s UI. The home screen and the main menu are neat and simple and have yet very appealing icons. The main menu and the standby screen can be customized beyond recognition and look more attractive. As mentioned earlier, the text sub menus are non customizable and their frequent appearances are irksome.  The eye candy might not impress users who are bothered by functionality.  We suggest that RIM should do some firmware updates to fix the looks of the deeper UI levels.  The home screen is pretty well organized and has 6 shortcut buttons placed at the bottom and the status icons on the top. The profiles can be accessed from here and as well as the 2 other features one chooses to assign for the convenience keys. The Menu navigation of the Curve does not use soft key based navigation where the available options for every options for every menu item. There are no lag or jerky motions while navigating. Though the processor is slower than the Bold, one would not notice any difference. The 8900 is a business device and the audience would mind the dreary look of the deeper sub menus.  The UI responded well and though it is not the biggest cheer of the phone, it is not that bad either.

Connectivity:
To get connected, one has 3 options: Wi-Fi, BIS or EDGE network that T mobile provides.  The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has a Wi-Fi network that allows you to check email, shop online, stream videos and music and even make phone calls. Setting up a Wi-Fi network is easy and one can switch back from a carrier service seamlessly.  The upside of the integrated Wi-Fi is UMA support which allows you to make and receive unlimited calls over a wireless network. In order to make this work, you need to sign up for T-Mobile’s Unlimited Hotspot Calling plan which is available separately. However, what is lacking is the inclusion of 3G support.  Excluding it might hurt its sales in the long term perspective. The browsing speeds were pretty good even on EDGE and yet inclusion of 3G would have made it a killer phone. There is the Bluetooth v2.0 which sports A2DP and a microSD data memory card slot.  One reason why 3G was excluded is the fact that UMA features would interfere with HSDPA networking. We would still want to see 3G included on the phone.

Web Browsing:
One of the biggest disappointments in the BlackBerry Bold was the web browser; the Curve features a much improved browser. Far from perfect, the browser’s home page was nicely rendered. The thumbnails were placed far too side of where they should have actually been, but otherwise the pages seemed natural. Pages loaded slowly on the EDGE but on Wi-Fi, they loaded with ease. The support of HTML Browser with support for RSS feeds and streaming media is an amazing addition.

Email:
One aspect where RIM manages to outshine any of its competitors is the email functionality on the BlackBerry.  The smooth and sleek feeling of email functionality is unique to the series.  The 8900 extends to the legacy of IMAP4, POP and the BES emailing system. Like the other BlackBerrys the 8900 can sync with the company’s BES with support for IBM, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise or Microsoft Exchange. It takes just about 10 seconds to set up a new account in the BES. The Curve 8900 can handle up to 10 email addresses. There is a unified inbox for email as well as separate account folders. The email system is undeniably robust, but we wish that the email apps were not dependent on the menus as it was tiresome to keep selecting menus through search, copy and forwarding emails.

Applications:
Being a phone that belongs to the business segment, it has all the basic applications which tend to be handy like the Calendar, Memo Pad, Task List, Voice Recorder, a password keeper, Encryption services, zip services and archiving services performing as usual. The calendar application badly needs a visual update which would make it more usable. The calendar is robust and has plenty of fields that keep track of appointments and meetings. Sadly, it has been the same wireframe box that it was when the original BlackBerry hit the market.  For Office Documents handling, there is the DataViz Documents to go.  It is not a complete premium edition, to use the other features, you will have to pay to upgrade it. The phone allows you to make minor edits to word documents and Excel spreadsheets. There is the built in GPS designed to work with BlackBerry Maps and other location based software to help you figure out your location.

GPS:
There is an in built GPS receiver and comes with A GPS support. There is the BlackBerry maps pre-installed, however for it to work, one needs to activate the BlackBerry internet plan. So you cannot have voice guided navigation till you upgrade it. The Maps provide basic functionality and voice guided navigation and it allows you to send your location to anyone via email or SMS.

Multimedia Capabilities:
In spite of being a business phone, the Curve 8900 is pretty good on the multimedia front. The music player has conservative looks and a decent functionality. The music player sorts the music library automatically according to artist, album or genre. One can make playlists and add album art. Sadly, custom equalizers are not available. The player can be minimized to play in background and go back to it via the task manager. There is the headphone jack that allows you to listen to music on your headphones. The microSD card could be upgraded and we wish there was more memory. The Media Sync app searches your iTunes library and allows you to synchronize music playlists with your BlackBerry. The transfer was slower than what it would have been on an Apple device, yet the inclusion of the feature to allow you to sync to your iTunes playlist is cool.

Video Player:
It was pleasant to watch videos on the Curve. Though it cannot rival the Storm’s screen, its higher pixel density and landscape orientation provide excellent quality. The Movie player played back video clips great, scaling the video without much trouble. For managing videos, Media Sync does not provide any help here. One can set to work in full screen with the virtual buttons by a key press. But here is the best part; Curve’s video player comes with DivX and XVid support along with MPEG 4 and WMV. A good deal on the whole.

Camera:
Like the Storm the BlackBerry 8900 Curve is equipped with a 3.2 MP auto-focus camera and a LED Flash. The imaging capabilities of the device are pretty limited and it produces images that look okay and good for a camera phone, even thought nothing that impressive. The snaps are pretty decent, but at reduced zoom, the loss of detail is obvious. It does a nice job with mixed lighting as well. The Camera interface could have been much better as the status message hides a good portion of what actually ends up in this picture making proper framing impossible. The UI is uncomfortable and there are no shortcuts available either. But perhaps, the saving grace is the image geo-tagging which allows one to record ones location in the images EXIF data. In the settings, white balance, colour effects and image stabilization, picture size and quality are available.  The picture quality is sadly below average in the 3 MP league and most of the photos have a distinct oil painting look. There is a problem with the corner softness, though that would not bother most of the users much. Nothing impressive here!

Video Recording:
If it sounded like the Camera was bad, the Video recording was worse.  A disaster If one wants to take full featured video recording. The videos are captured in 3Gp format and can have colour effects applied.

Performance:

Call Quality:
Call quality of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 was satisfactory. There was some background noise and made audio quality less pristine than the other smart phones. There is the Enhance Audio option where once can boost treble or bass, but that would not improve the call quality either. The speakerphone was OK and there was some hollowness in the voice of the callers.  If it was not for the cut off bass the Curve could have been amongst the best sounding mobile phones in the market.

Responsive:
The Curve has a 512MHz processor and is fairly responsive and you would not notice much difference between the more powerful Bold’s performance.  There was some sluggishness when we tried accessing our photo album or camera. But that would not be much of a bother either.

Speakers:
The 8900 has a speaker that cannot rival the Bold’s output yet is not bad either. The Video playback was impressive and the picture quality was smooth and the picture looked great on the high-res screen.

Connectivity:
Connecting to Wi-Fi was easy and the EDGE speeds were OK too. The GPS navigator worked reasonably well and one can summarize that the RIM 8900 performs as well as its predecessors.

Battery Life:
The Curve 8900 runs on a 1,400mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 5.5 hours and up to 14.5 days of standby time. We got about 8 and a half hour of continuous talk time and its digital SAR rating is 1.01 per kilogram. The reason that these figures are better than the Bold is perhaps because of the lack of 3G. Using GPS drained the battery very fast and a car charger would come in handy.

Accessories:

T-Mobile ships the BlackBerry Curve 8900 with a travel charger, a USB cable, a 256MB MicroSD card, a protective case, a software CD and a reference material.  It lacks the 8 GB memory card that the Storm offered.

Warranty:

There is a warranty of one year provided on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 from the date of purchase.

Verdict:

The Curve 8900 is a great addition to the BlackBerry series. It is a gorgeous and a powerful device that is packed to the brim with excellent features and hardware. The display is beautiful and a decent camera, a puffed up 512MHz processor, and is excellent for email, messaging and multimedia. It lacks 3G and that is probably what might dent its sales.  Apart from that, this has everything a regular user looks for. Yet, it does not deviate from its main target : The Business class. Definitely a must buy and highly recommended if you are looking to own a business phone that simplifies things and your work.

Check other 2010 Latest Blackberry Phone Reviews in this website.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 - Technical Specification Table

Design:

One of the sleekest:
Design wise we noticed that the Bold 9700 and another one of BlackBerry’s smallest handsets, the Curve 8900, look and feel as though they have been cut out from the same cloth. Having the same dimensions of height and width, the Bold packs just a wee bit of extra flab on the thickness (H x W x D), 4.29″ x 2.36″ x 0.56 and the set weights a light 4.3 ounces along with the batteries. But the couple of extra decimals cannot do much to diminish the super pocket friendly dimensions and weight of the Bold.

The aesthetics:
As a trademark of the original Bold, this new BlackBerry 9700 model too has been trimmed with a heavy dose of chrome with a broad swoop on the chin. The thin rails running up on the sides and the thick stripe on the top back adds to the aesthetic beauty of the phone. Here is the glad news for most of you out there who hate the fingerprint smudges; none of the panels on the phone are thick enough to show off the fingerprints and RIM has employed some rubbery black plastic on the rest of the parts of the phone to repel them. The original Bold had a full leather wrapped back that made a splash, but that has been toned down to just a more modest patch of black leather on the battery door that still seems to retain the executive fashion statement. The solid feel of the phone well compliments the overall aura of the quality.

The buttons:
The diet of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone has added a touch of class to the proceedings as it now looks like a Storm 2 handset but with a whole lot of keys jammed on instead. As in the case of all the BlackBerry phones, you will find the display and main keypad is separated by a strip of the most commonly used controls that includes talk, end call, back etc, which can be accessed with comfort using the thumb finger. The top of the phone houses two buttons, the lock and mute keys. The lock key turns off the display and locks the keys and the latter mutes the phone when ringing, but holding it down will put the phone into standby mode. RIM has also taken a leaf out of Nokia’s book by including a method of unlocking the phone using the star key coupled with the call button.

What is on the sides?
On the right side of the phone, there is a bubbled out volume rocker and a dedicated camera shutter button. The up/down volume buttons also doubles as a music navigation button for the media player. In the left side, you can find a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB charging, data connection and a programmable shortcut key. Since this is built into the curved chassis, a portion of the headphone jack is left exposed. On the older Bold, this was a flush socket, which meant a more snug fit; however, we did not experience any issues as far as the audio playback is concerned. So it is just an aesthetic issue. There is a built-in expansion slot just behind the battery door. The best part about the slot is that, it can be accessed without even removing the actual battery and this slot can accommodate cards of capacity of a whooping 32GB.

The ball replaced by trackpad:
The earlier set of BlackBerry had been always known for their trackballs, but the Bold 9700 has taken the divergent path of the most recent BlackBerrys like the Curve 8250 by opting for an optical trackpad. As you swipe your finger over the gem shaped center button, it acts just like the trackpad on a laptop. While some of the BlackBerry fan will be missing the tacky little pearl, they certainly will not be missing the reliability issues that always seemed to pop up from it collecting lint. This new navigation can be adopted easily and soon, you will find yourself trading in the tactile feedback of the old trackball for a slicker and quieter solution.

A better keyboard:
The QWERTY keyboard in Blackberry Bold 9700 Smartphone is better than ever before. The bigger keys make up for a lack of space between them with a sculpted finish that makes each one stand out. But it is disappointing that the keys of the 9700 are not as clicky as the Bold 8900’s, but you will have no trouble typing with it. The build feels tighter, much more refined and quieter than the Curve model. BlackBerry knows what people want from the keyboards and they have proved it once more.

Brilliant display:
As in the case of the Curve model, the new Bold too uses a brilliant half-VGA display of resolution 480 x 360 pixels. The screen is now among the highest resolution in the BlackBerry world, as it stands at a magic-matching HVGA resolution.  It has the same brightness, resolution and colour of the Curve 8900, which is amazing. Being just 2.44″, it certainly cannot compete with the full touchscreen mobiles available; however, the half VGA brightness that has been crammed into the tiny area produces a tack sharp display that makes even the tiniest text and details look very crisp. The powerful backlight offers all the punch that you would need to read under all conditions, without washing out the deep black levels and vibrant shades. The display is also supposed to have a light sensing display, but the Bold 9700 seems to have confused about that function, constantly upping the brightness of the screen when the light conditions do not seem to change.

User Interface:

The navigation has been has been exclusively achieved via the optical trackpad, even though the keyboard offers some easy to use shortcuts. The home screen sports a wider space for your favourite picture, with the favourite icons from the top level of the full menu appearing at the bottom of the home screen to act as shortcuts instead. You will also find links to the sound profiles which are included that allows you to quickly switch off the noisy ring tones or set the phone to vibrate only before entering a meeting or cinema. By pressing on the menu key, you will get a full set of icons that include the complete set of BlackBerry applications and functionalities. If you want to navigate through this effectively, the only way is through the trackpad. So, make sure that you go through the sensitivity setting in the options menu. Though this is not necessary, some might find that the trackpad is almost unusable at the default sensitivity level, and this is especially if you have come from using a physical trackball.

By holding down the menu button, the running tasks pane open up and you will be able to see what is eating up the memory, but we have to admit that the 624MHz processor performs in an admirable fashion. Though the trackpad can be used for most of the operations, it is the menu button that does most of the hard work, as the most important elements of each of the applications are accessed in this manner.

Basic specifications of Bold 9700:

Moving on to the features, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 has a hardware specification that is same as its predecessor for the most part. We were delighted to see the 3G internet which was a much needed feature that made many potential consumers turn down the Curve 8900. The other highlight features included WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS. The Bold 9700 sports a 3.2 mega-pixel camera, which is an upgrade from the 2.0 mega pixel that was available in the original Bold. Out of the box, the 9700 come with only 256MB of internal memory; however, RIM has included a 2GB microSD card in the built-in expansion slot.

BlackBerry 5.0 operating system:

We are glad that the Bold 9700 Smartphone ships with the BlackBerry 5.0 operating system which is same as the one that shipped with the Storm 9530. But we are left wishing that RIM had done something about the layout of the screen, it still seems to be very sparse. For instance, the contacts menu looks very dull; while the names are listed well, the start black and white background and font could do so with a little design tweak. Functionality wise, it looks and feels the same as the 4.5X software that is running on most of the other models, but this version does have a very long list of minor but appreciable upgrades which includes the ability to forward the calendar entries and resize the photos upon sending them.

The old fashioned OS:

The operating systems of Apple, Palm and Google look great in their 21st century flashy and updated software, while the Microsoft, Nokia and RIM look like the old men of the smartphone world who are just clinging on to what still works. The BlackBerry OS is much preferable to the Symbian or Windows Mobile 6.5. We have to admit the fact that the BlackBerry OS does the business tasks exceptionally well. It is just that the antiquated look and the relatively small app store feel like rust on an otherwise shiny new PDA. Though you might accuse the Bold for being a bit boring when it comes to the design of the user interface, the most impressive fact is that, it keeps everything simple. This is one of the main reasons why consumers have flocked to BlackBerry for so many years. We hope that there will be a few design tweaks in the future to make the menu look a little less boring, but for now, it is perfectly functional and allows the phone to operate at a pretty fast rate.

Contacts:

As we had mentioned earlier, the contacts list looks quite dull. At the profile, the things are a little better, with a picture and all the information about the contact displayed with ease along with the birthdays and your anniversary with him or her. Being able to scroll down and select an action is one of the likable elements of the phone and this means you need not launch a dedicated application every time you wish to send a text.

Call features in Bold 9700:

When you are actually making a call, you have a lot of options on offer. When a call is made, you get to see all the pertinent information that was mentioned earlier in the profile on the call. Activate the loudspeaker and place it with the back down on a flat surface, and the phone becomes a very decent speaker phone indeed. It is a very well known fact that the BlackBerry series which is designed for the business users and with respect to that, the in-call options are even more strongly expected. Here, you can add a caller to the conversation and you can also transfer it on to another person using the same method. Yet another nice touch given to the phone is the ability to enhance the audio of call that brings up the bass or the voice tones, in case you are struggling to hear either, which actually makes a great difference when the person that you are trying to speak to is in a loud environment. The in-call notes are really likable too. Though it is not a latest feature, having the ability to write down a note on a phone conversation and then retrieve that in the contact profile later on, is a very handy function, especially if your BlackBerry is for your office.

Wireless connectivity:

For the sake of connectivity, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 phone has WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G. All works well and especially the WiFi as per usual on all the BlackBerry handsets. The WiFi and 3G switches between each other quite fast. If you have enough battery life available, you can always leave it on and let it connect to your trusted networks whenever you get in range of them. Bluetooth is very easy to setup with both of them having their own set up widget in the menu screen that helps explain what is going on when you try to connect it to a near-by device. We especially liked the option to ‘listen’ for a device trying to find our device, like the two objects were silently shouting commands to each other, just out of range of the human ear.

Everything fastened:

It is worth noting that RIM has significantly sped up the performance in both the BlackBerry Bold and Storm, with both of the smartphones reacting to the inputs and opening applications at a much faster rate than ever before. For instance, when we try to open the gallery in the original Bold, it takes quite some time to load, whereas now, the thumbnails pop up almost instantly. Similarly, opening and closing the applications has become a much easier experience than ever before, making it extremely easy to navigate around without being forced to wait each time an operation is done.

Disappointing browser:

The biggest disappointment as far as the software is concerned was with the lack of improvements in the default browser of BlackBerry, which literally lags behind all its rivals. The slow load time of the phone was very evident when put into test with the iPhone. The tiny display also hampers browsing on the pages that are not formatted for mobile web, but the fine resolution of the display makes the microscopic texts readable. It is certainly not the most intuitive browser on the market, with constant hanging on websites, both on WiFi and 3G connection. The evidence of this can be found in the fact RIM has recently purchased Torch Mobile, developers of Webkit browsers, which is similar to the one used in iPhone and Android platforms, which means the company clearly knows it needs to up the game here.

Not an intuitive one:

You will be able install other browsers, but they cannot be set as default. You will also find some nice touches in the browser, like the way you will be set it to mimic Firefox when accessing certain pages. But some of the other issues like zooming in and out of the pages still does exist, like you can click to zoom in, but have to press the alt key to zoom out. Though we are able to understand why RIM has used these keyboard shortcuts, in today’s pinch, zoom, twist and punch browser interaction society, the Bold has started to look a little out-dated. We have to admit that there are very few options for the non-touchscreen phones, but we would have liked to see some other better use of the trackpad and perhaps some improvised smart-fit text resizing technology. Given the fact that we are marking down the phones for not being able to play flash, it is certainly not acceptable for a phone to struggle with the JavaScript.

Camera:

The 3.2 megapixel camera that is on the 9700 is just identical to the one that is planted on the Curve 8900. As with the internet browser, the Bold’s camera is not there for winning any photographic competition. But we are not here to give a bad idea about it, we are fans of the camera and for what it is designed for, it does a bang up job. The camera auto focuses with a quick half press on the center button and the snaps are sharp and have reasonable colour clarity. The LED flash of the phone is good enough to snap out some workable snapshots in the dark, although you will be able to hear a healthy dose of typical low-light noise to go along with it. The 2x digital zoom can be handily operated by the optical trackpad and it is a nice touch too; especially as beyond that the phone cannot really handle that much of detail. The bad news is that the 2.33” display does not make a great view finder and also seems to exhibit a significant amount of latency as the camera is moved around.

Video recorder:

The video recorder feature is same as that of the camera feature. The phone can record and it will capture footage for those odd moments when you want to share them with your friends latter. Since the video is only a HVGA, there is not a lot of point putting it on any large display, but again, we do not expect that you would want to. It captures a fairly high amount of detail in the videos and the chop-less footage quality appears to be offering a fairly high fps capture. While there is no full video suite to play with latter, you will atleast be able to rename and replay the file to the content of your heart. The great news here is that, if they are not too long, you will even be able to send them.

Media features:

As we said earlier, RIM is trying its best to make the BlackBerry range less of an “Executive type, serious face” device and more of a “wow” factor to it. This has been achieved by the converged media sector on the new 9700. In the earlier model, music was a separate and aloof function and the 3.5mm headphone jack can make listening to music on the go a much easier experience.

Music player:

You will not find any special feature on the music player, but has all the functions that you would hope for including shuffle, repeat, playlists and categorising them by album, artist, etc. There is a menu option to stream the songs out to a Bluetooth headset. The album art displaying interface is cute and it is perfectly OK for the MP3 player of the Bold 9700 could replace an MP3 player, provided, you use a microSD card of massive capacity. The formats supported goes beyond the simple MP3 as there is also support for WMA and ACC+ t00. Hence, you will not be hamstrung by so many of the incompatible file types.

Video playback:

As in the case of the music player, the video player too does just what it needs to without being fancy. We are not sure if you would want to watch videos on a 2.4” display, but what we do know is that the increased and the shrunken proportions make the video look sumptuous on this mobile. When we tried to watch a full length movie on the phone; not only were we conscious the whole time of people wondering why we were staring a BlackBerry for such a long period of time, but the screen seems to have lost some of the details. Coming to formats supported, the 9700 is compatible with DivX, MWV, XviD and 3gp codecs. But for some reason, the Xvid is supported only partially for some reason.

Image playback:

Despite having 8GB full of media files, the Bold 9700 did not show even the slightest hint of slowing down before powering through the thumbnails of the photos which were displayed in just milliseconds, rather than having to wait for ages. Scrolling through them and opening them for editing was a simple task too.

Other media features:

Some other nice media features included in the phone is a voice recorder with apparently no limit on how much of sound can be recorded on one setting. You can even take voice notes so that you will not have to write down that important plot line you had just thought for the novel; one that you might never write.

Making a call:

Although dialling with the miniature number keys of BlackBerry can be a pain, the Bold 9700 had an excellent call quality. The Bold came out with flying colours on the test that we had with the landline. The phone distinctly lacked any warbles blips or distortion, making the PDA one of the most competent smartphones for voice that we have reviewed so far. Though we were pleased with the call quality, the 3G connectivity was not very pleasing as it dropped out on more than one occasion to the default GPRS.

Messaging and Texting:

BlackBerry is actually pretty good for messaging. It is very easy to set up, with just the “ask the guy from IT” elements necessary for you to start receiving the push emails. It is much easier if you want to get involved with some of the consumer email as T-mobile would want you to. The process is as simple as entering your email address and password on the popular accounts like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts. The plug-in gives you direct access to your mailbox. Interacting with email will be a pleasant experience from the well laid out inbox to the sheer number of keyboard shortcuts making navigation around messaging easier than ever before. However, if you are a kind of person who gets millions of junk emails a day, and you do not want the hassle of having to delete them all at once, you have to mark them unopened as it appears that you can mark blocks of messages for deletion, rather than the relevant ones. This is one of those times that on the Bold that you will be ever experiencing any kind of slow down, as the phone struggles to keep up.
Your texting experience will be same as the experience that you will be getting out of emailing. Threaded conversations are a real boon as you will have the set of keyboard shortcuts, however, you might not get as many as you would get with email as they offer a richer messaging experience. With the 9700, you will be able to even send an IM or Facebook message to the person.

Games:

There are a range of games that would keep the business person amused. We are great fans of the Texas Hold’em King 2 poker game and there will not be a soul in the world who will not end up addicted to the BrickBreaker game at some point in their lives. You will also note that the latter works well with the trackpad rather than the ball, this will surely be a big relief for those BrickBreaker BlackBerry fans.

Applications:

There are the Word, Excel and Powerpoint viewers and they do exactly what they are supposed to. The search function is excellent and it can check through practically anything, from messages to tasks to contacts and makes it very easy to spot something that you are looking for in a hurry. Of course, the BlackBerry maps are back into action again, but they are still no better. The cartoonish place labelling and blocky graphics were quite irritating and you also have the GPS system which works well with the inbuilt mapping software. However, we liked some of the features, like the layers option on the map that allows you to make notes on where the important things are, like your house, work place, etc, any place you would struggle to find in general life.

What if I lose it?

The PC software is dealt with in two ways: Desktop manager and media sync. BlackBerry Desktop manager basically allows you to back up all your files to your computer to make sure they are safe if you lose the phone, which we all will do at some point, let us be honest here. Media Sync is one step beyond that in terms of entertainment, whereby it reads your iTunes and Windows Media Player playlists and sends them to your Bold 2 9700 directly to the new device without the hassle of having to put it into mass storage mode every five seconds.

Battery and battery life:

Despite the phone being small, RIM has kept the battery capacity to 1500 mAhr for the new Bold. The battery employed has a talktime of six hours and standby time of 21 days which is a significant rise from the 4.5 hours of talktime and 13.5 days of standby time that was offered by the first model. In fact, the 9700 claims to be having a battery life that is better than any other modern BlackBerry available in the market; which is true too. It can easily last a whole day with normal usage and can sometimes give you another day if the Wi-Fi is shut down and push email when not required. It is really nice that RIM has managed to optimise its battery software to work so efficiently. This means the users do not have to consider carrying a charger around with them “just in case”.

Warranty:

RIM offers BlackBerry Bold 9700 one year limited warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

The reduction in size of the Bold and a handful of the refinements has made the new Bold one of BlackBerry’s best ever smart phones. If you had read our Curve 8900 review, you might have noticed that we fell in love with it, but was not happy with the fact that the smartphone was stuck on the EDGE internet. The Bold 9700 essentially takes that winning design and adds the crucial missing element in the form of 3G Internet access, along with a better keyboard, optical trackpad, and even longer-lasting battery. Though the model lacks the frills of an iPhone or Plam Pre, for the utilitarian business users, it proves to be one of the most polished smartphones on today’s market.

Check 2010 Blackberry Reviews in our website.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Smartphone - Technical specifications, Features

Design:

Dimensions of Curve 8350:
Blackberry Curve 8350 retains the same shape and design of the earlier curve models, but as the new model is packed with a load of features, the size is somewhat bigger. The dimensions of the smartphone are as follows: 4.4 inches high, 2.4 inches wide and 0.7 inches thick with a weight of 4.7 ounces. It is a bit bigger compared with RIM Blackberry curve 8330, which measures 4.2 inches high, 2.4 inches wide and 0.6 inch thick and weighs 4.2 ounces. Unlike the Nextel phones, for instance, the Motorolai365 which has the rugged casing, the new model is a solid handset carrying a soft touch finish along the outer edges to make it easy to grip.

Sharp-looking Screen:
A 2.4-inch, QVGA, non-touch display with 65, 536-colour output and 320X240-pixel resolution is sported by Curve 8350. The screen has got a sharp-look which is complemented by the updated user interface of Blackberry OS 4.6.1. The only small issue about the design is that all of the icons look similar, although there is description when we scroll over the icon it is very difficult to use on the fly. Similar to the earlier models, RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 is also incorporated with light-sensing technology which adjusts the display’s brightness depending on the natural light or environment. RIM also allows you to customise your home screen with different themes and background images.

QWERTY Keypad:
A group of traditional navigation layout of Talk and End keys, a Menu short cut, a Back button and a trackball navigator can be found beneath the display. As the trackball is placed a little deeper than earlier models, it is not very easy to move it side to side and pressing-in, to select an item also requires a little more exertion. Some acclimation should be taken for the users who are upgrading from the Blackberry Curve 7100i, which bears a side jog wheel. The Blackberry Curve 8350 Smartphone is incorporated with QWERTY keypad which is more attractable than SureType keypad of Curve 7100i. The new model’s keypad sports small buttons but as there is a fair amount of space between the keys, many may find it easy to use.

Connections:

A 2.5 mm headset jack, a mini USB-port and a Direct Connect button are present on the left side of the Smartphone, where as the right side bears a volume rocker and a user-programmable short-cut key that is set to camera by default. On the top of the device a mute button is present and on the rear side is a camera, flash and a self-portrait mirror. Last but not the least, under the battery you will find microSD/SDHC expansion slot and SIM card slot. Again, the memory cards have got the inconvenient place.

Features:

Key Features of Blackberry Curve 8350:
With a two years gap between RIM Blackberry Curve 7100i and RIM Blackberry Curve 8350, finally the new model has brought the its customers with a number of betterments and additional features.
Some of the key features of Blackberry Curve 8350 from Blackberry Curve Series includes incorporated GPS functionalities, 2 Megapixel digital camera with 5x digital zoom, flash and video,  DataViz Documents to Go to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs, Internal Antenna improves the design appeal and durability,  Speakerphone optimized for great sound quality with Direct Connect, Advanced Media Player - for music, videos and pictures, Removable or Rechargeable 1400 mAH Battery, microSD memory card slot allows for plenty of storage, Bluetooth version 2.0 with support for (A2DP) stereo Bluetooth and more, Additional Messaging Capabilities - support for instant messaging and multimedia messaging including audio, pictures and text to email addresses and capable phones.

Direct Connect:
With the new Blackberry curve 8350’s Nationwide and International Direct Connect, its customers will be capable to instantly connect within UK and also to users in other eligible countries. The Blackberry Curve 8350 is also the first smartphone to offer Group Connect, permitting its customers to set-up group conversations with up to 20 other users. In addition to this, there is also something called as Talkgroup which connects you to groups of up to 200 people within same local market.

A real Smartphone:
Principal Analyst with analyst firm In-Stat, David Chamberlain said that “Smartphones in general and Blackberry products in particular have become more important to both business people and consumers”. The Blackberry curve 8350 with its PTT capability filled the communication needs of many industries particularly for those in the blue-collar segment of construction, field services, transportation and manufacturing.

Multimedia Features:
The Blackberry Curve 8350 offers rich multimedia, organiser, internet browsing capabilities and access to thousands of other mobile applications along with its capability of delivering unmatched push email and messaging feature of Blackberry Solution. The latest design includes a built-in media player which supports files like MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV and H.263 video clips. The new model allows the customers to browse the Internet and download email attachments quickly and easily with its newly included built-in Wi-Fi. The customers can easily send and receive emails or surf Internet even while talking on phone when it is connected to Wi-Fi network.
The other multimedia features comprise of a search function, playlist creation, shuffle and repeat, and you also get a full screen mode for video playback. A software CD included bears Roxio Easy Media Creator, which allows you to create MP3 from CDs and add audio tags. The device carries a 128MB flash memory but if we load multimedia files on microSD/SDHC card the memory space will be conserved. The expansion slot can take up to 16GB cards.

Blackberry 8350 RIM Smartphone:

Vice President of corporate marketing at RIM said that “The new Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone offers customers an exceptional communications and multimedia experience along with the power and convenience.”

2-mega pixel Camera:

A 2-mega pixel camera with digital zoom and video recording capabilities is sported by Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone. It provides three size options and three quality selections for still images. Along with flash you can also fine tune white balance and add colour effects. The smartphone also offers geo-tagging photos with its in-built GPS. First microSD card must be installed in the device to use video recording otherwise it will not allow you to start recording a clip. However video options are limited for Curve 8350. You can only get two formats (normal and MMS mode) and colours-that is it.

The picture quality in particular is really not exhorting. Though the objects are clear, colours are flat-looking and gray. As the clips are very blur the recorded videos are also not of a great quality.

Bluetooth 2.0:

Bluetooth 2.0 incorporated in the new model is also on-board for use with mono and stereo headsets, hands free kits and Bluetooth peripherals. As the Curve 8350 has built-in GPS, a Bluetooth GPS receiver would not be necessary. The Built-in GPS can be called as both autonomous and assisted, which uses satellites and cellular triangulation to find your location. Through the apps like BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps for Mobile you can get maps and text based, turn-by-turn driving directions, but you will have to use a location based service like TeleNav GPS Navigator for real-time tracking and voice guided instructions.

BlackBerry Internet:

Voice is not the only means of communication for BlackBerry Curve 8350. Multiple email solutions are provided. To deliver corporate emails, this smartphone can synchronise with the company’s Blackberry Enterprise server, with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell Groupwise. You can access up to ten personal or business POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts with Blackberry Internet Service. You can also open Microsoft word, Powerpoint, Excel, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF and many more by using the attachment viewer which is incorporated in it. Many popular instant messaging clients like Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google talk and Blackberry messenger are also included in Curve 8350.

Blackberry OS 4.6.1:

Due to the updation of Blackberry OS 4.6.1, more advanced productivity tools and multimedia capabilities are brought by Curve 8350. Now you can edit word, excel and powerpoint files as smartphone first transports with Dataviz documents To Go Standard Edition. You will have to upgrade to Premium edition, to get an ability to create new documents. Some other PIM applications can be listed as a calendar, a task list, a memo pad, a voice recorder, a password keeper and many more. You can also always download applications to a great extent into the smartphone.

HTML Web Browser:

We should thank Curve 8350 for providing an ameliorated, full HTML web browser. Still it is not very easy or advanced as compared to its competitors, but it is better than earlier models. You have two options to view, such as Column view or Page view. There is an on-screen cursor which can be moved around in any direction and can be placed at any part of the page where you can click a link, along with zoom-in and zoom-out functions. As there is the integrated Wi-Fi you can browse at some speed. You can manually add a network or the smartphone automatically can search for the available network. Some Wi-Fi tools also exists such as diagnostics, DNS lookup and site survey.

Miscellaneous features of Curve 8350:

Some other phone features includes a speakerphone, a voice-activated dialing, speed dial, text messaging and lastly multimedia messaging. Limitation is applied on the address book with available memory only, with plenty of room in each entry for multiple phone numbers that include direct connect numbers, email addresses, work and home addresses, job title and many more. You can assign photo to a contact as well as to a group category-business or personal or you can add one of the 45 polyphonic ring tones for the call identification.

Performance:

Call Quality:
Though the audio quality is clear, sometimes the calls sound hollow as if the callers are talking in an empty room. Though there was plenty of volume, same problem was encountered the speakerphone was activated. Still they were able to continue conversation with an airline voice automated response system without dropping any calls during the testing period. The tests also proved that we can pair the Curve 8350 smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth Headset and Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

GPS Navigation Performance:
Though most part of the Curve 8350 is found responsive, it was also found that you will experience some lag with even simple chores like menu navigation. You may also find some instances in which the device may get stuck for few seconds on the main menu page, making it difficult to scroll to other items or launch apps, after exiting out of the video player. Coming to video, let us say multimedia experience will sound good. As most of the smartphones, we cannot watch the full length movies on Curve 8350, but as the playback is smooth it would be fine if you watch short video clips. If you try listening to MP3 files, you will experience it hollow on speakerphone. As you expect the sound quality is much better on head phones. As the new model is not fitted with 3.5 mm headphone jack, you will need to connect an audio adapter to use ear buds or headphones.

Internet Service:
If you try use Blackberry Internet Service to assemble your Yahoo email account with the device, the process will be done without any arrest and can successfully receive and check mails in the inbox. Nevertheless, the Curve 8350 got trouble sending emails. It should be resend many times in order to be send to the recipient. The promising thing is that smartphone did not have any problem connecting to a Wi-Fi network.

Battery Life:
The RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 comes along with a 1,400mAH Lithium ion battery with a talk time of up to 4 hours. In battery drain tests performed, it was found that one can speak continuously for 8.5 hours on single charge. It was found that the device has a digital-SAR rating of 0.88 watt per kilogram, according to FCC Radiation tests.

Package Particulars:

The pack of RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 comprises of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone, a travel charger, a USB charging/sync cable, a wired stereo headset, a SIM card, a 1GB microSD card, a swivel belt holster, a software CD and reference material.

Warranty:

RIM offers Blackberry Curve 8350 one year standard warranty.

Verdict:

With Customers looking for a fully features smartphone with Direct Connect push-to-talk capability, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS can be served by the new RIM Blackberry Curve 8350. It also provides an updated OS, advanced multimedia capabilities and a full HTML browser. Sometimes Blackberry Curve 8350 made get struck in between of the operations but that would not necessarily stop anyone from buying it. It is the first smartphone without an external antenna.  For the user who is waiting to switch to a new smartphone with many advanced features the new model will be the best suit for them.

Blackberry Curve 8350 Smartphone - Technical Specifications, Features

Finally a sleek Blackberry:

The design engineers of blackberry have taken a great leap completely leaving behind the ugly blackberry model and have moved to a completely new look. The Pearl 8100 is sleek, with a black and silver theme and weighs just 90grams, being extremely pocket friendly. It has its dimensions to be (H X W X D)mm 107 x 50 x 14.5 mm. The overall size of the phone makes it almost on par with the candy bar hand sets. The above description does not at all sound like the one of a blackberry or even a smartphone, this itself is a great leap in the market of smartphones. The Pearl gets a great plus in terms of design as it gives you more of a phone like feel that you do not usually get with the other blackberry smartphones. The only other blackberry that has got a candy bar form factor is Blackberry 7100G, which is bulky.

Why “Pearl”?

Now let us come to the main factor on why the series has been named as “Pearl”. The trademark scroll wheel of Blackberry has gone and it is replaced by a miniature white trackball placed on the navigational area. This track ball looks like a pearl and hence, the phone is named after it. This trackball can be rotated, moved and pressed in order to make selections. Though it might consume a little time for you to get used to it, it is far better than the previous scroll wheel system and in fact quite a clever one.

Buttons and controls:

Towards the left and right side of the track ball are the back and menu buttons, that allows you to move around well. These buttons are very vital for the sake of navigation as the Blackberry Pearl 8100 does not have a touch screen. The display has a resolution of a mere 240 x 260 pixels. But the good thing is that a light sensor has been included which means you will not be having any issues in reading even in outdoors. Blackberry has offered three home screen themes which can be previewed before applying. This is a good touch to the smartphone.

The left and the right edges of the phone have a convenience key each which can be customised according to your wish. But by default, the key on the right takes you to the camera application and the one on the left is used for voice dialing application. The right side of the pearl also has a volume rocker that works only either when the music application is going on or a voice call is proceeding. The top edge of the phone has a mute button which acts as a pause button during music playback, otherwise puts the phone on standby mode. The left edge has a mini USB power connector and unfortunately a ‘non-standard’ headset jack.

QWERTY keyboard:

You can never imagine a blackberry without a keyboard. Pearl 8100 Smartphone has a small 50mm keyboard. The individual keys are wide and the suretype predictive system is used for entry of text and this means that most of the keys have two Qwerty alphabets and a these buttons are surrounded and picked up with a silver surround and hence easy to catch-up with.

Features:

Coming to the part of features, the RIM Blackberry pearl 8100 has a lot of first times. The set of new features include memory expansion, MP3 player and a camera. Though these features have been there in the smart phones for a long time now, the inclusion of these in blackberry is a great move towards the right direction. The pearl 8100 is a quad band phone with support for GPRS and EDGE.

Memory expansion, Beneath the battery:

The fact that the memory has been expanded is most welcome but the place where the slot has been placed is not that appreciated. The microSD slot is placed right below the battery slot which means you will not be able to add a card unless you switch it off. But in the better side, it switches on automatically once the battery is placed back into it.

Good music player:

The music player offered is reasonably good. Options are available to play tracks from a memory card. You will be able to set any tone as your ring tone quite easily. You can continue to have a music playback as you do some of your other tasks such as making notes diary etc. In case a call comes, the music play back pauses and resumes once the call ends.

Low resolution camera:

Though we are pleased with the fact that a camera has been finally included in the Blackberry Pearl 8100 Mobile Phone and that flash and self portrait mirror are great. The camera resolution is just 1.3 mega pixels which is very average and the fact that there is no video recording facility is also agonising. Though there are not any filters provided like the sepia or greyscale, a few white balance settings like sunny, cloudy, night, and indoor are available. There is an automatic settings on offer for this.

Browsing:

RIM Blackberry Pearl 8100 Smartphone comes with an Internet browser which is an HTML browser that allows the user to view the Web pages in HTML format. You can browse the Internet in the same way as you would do from their office or home computer. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 comes with an embedded RIM wireless modem. The phone comes with quad band network connectivity which allows the user to use their mobile phone in many countries including Europe, North America & Asia. The user can store their data on the phones 64MB of internal Flash memory or expand the phones memory by adding a MicroSD memory card.

Communication:

A PC software is provided along with the package that can be used to synchronise dairy and tasks  with your pearl 8100. Emails can be sent either using your company’s network in case it has support for blackberry or by using the internet email service that is offered by your network operator. The absence of WiFi will not be felt much as Bluetooth is always available.

Typing:

The predictive suretype system that we had mentioned earlier is made use of by the Blackberry pearl 8100. . Two letters share a single key and, as you type, software in the Pearl has a guess at the word you want and when you spot it among those suggested you can use the trackball to pick it out. But the whole process of predicting and then selecting is very slow and so it is better to type the words on your own. Since the size of the keyboard is also small, you might have to use your finger tips which might prove to be a little painful after a while and could easily annoy frequent texters.

Call quality:

The call quality of RIM Blackberry Pearl 8100 is very good as is loud and clear both via handset and speaker.

Battery life:

The battery life of is quite good as it gives about 10 hours of continuous music playback. This value has been made possible as the display turns off itself on two continuous minutes of non-usage.

Warranty:

RIM offers Blackberry Pearl 8100 one year limited warranty.

Verdict:

Blackberry Pearl 8100 is RIM’s most consumer focused model that shows that the company is keen to take on operations like Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The new design and multimedia features are most welcome. If you are a corporate who is fun loving too (a rare combo), then blackberry Pearl 8100 will satisfy most of your needs.

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Technical Specification Details of RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Smartphone

The Blackberry Curve 8310, released in the year 2007, has turned out to be the most loved phone in the Blackberry Curve series. It is the Blackberry series with satellite navigation along with features like email, internet, 2 mega pixel camera and memory card slot. RIM have taken on a great idea by continuing to release models in the Blackberry 8800 series that keep the people of corporate sector happy and simultaneously the Blackberry Curve series which will keep the consumers sector happy. This time Blackberry has to face some fierce competition as the mobiles that run on the Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Platform are selling twice that of those running on the RIM’s Blackberry.

Blackberry Curve 8310 is the successor of Blackberry Curve 8300 which was released in the month of June, the same year. While both of them has similar looks and features, the major difference is the introduction of the GPS.

Smart, stylish design:

The design of the phone is exactly the same as that of its predecessor. One of the major things that the designers of the Blackberry Curve had to keep in mind is that, since this series, unlike the others, is consumer oriented, they has to design the phone in such a way that it is slim and stylish enough to attract the consumer community. It has a 2.5 inch LCD display. The Curve 8310 has managed to weigh an average 111grams that is just 12 grams more than Blackberry Pearl, that had two letters in each key. But 8310, being just 10mm wider at 60mm has managed to put on a full QWERTY keyboard. Hence, the designers have succeeded, making 8310 one of the most stylish device in the market.

Navigation:

The small keys in the QWERTY keyboard work much faster than the usual T9 predictive text available in the Pearl, once you get used to it. The main navigational button is the mini pearl like trackball that was in imitation from the Pearl. With this, you will see that scrolling through long pages is no longer irritating.  This smart phone has been designed ergonomically.

Menu usage:

The menus of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8310 are really a breeze to use once you get used to it. Blackberry key switch is used to switch between various applications and reassign items in the launcher. Once the application is opened, the same key brings up very useful drop down menus. The sat nav application was absent in the default programs list in the Curve’s launch bar, surprising! The phone has a simple navigation set up that aids you in a lot of means. The Curve lends itself particularly well for your email and browsing needs. There are no annoying home pages that you will have to go to and eliminating your need for entering the entire URLs of the sites that you want to visit. All that you need to do is, select Go To option from the drop-down menu where you can select whichever website you want to, when the browser application is active.

Satellite navigation feature:

You must have used the sat nav application in the other mobiles and said, “what is the great deal?” as all of them take ages to even pinpoint your current location. But the combo of the Google maps, Vodafone sat nav and Blackberry have done a great job. They get you your locations in just a few seconds. But Vodafone cannot actually take all the success of the sat nav feature as it had bought in a third party application from Telmap that had already proven to be successful. The Google map application is not custom designed to be used while driving and so, you will have to plot the route before you start driving and then start off by following the sat nav.

Sat nav menus:
Even if you are not familiar with the way Blackberry menus work, you will not be having any trouble working with it. All that you will have to know is that, if you click over the red arrow icon, the Vodafone sat nav application will be launched and then just select yes to admit Telmap to make use of the satellites to get the maps and locations for you. It will then take you to a screen that has options like “Where To“, “Place or Business“, “Where am I“ and “My places and Inbox”. As each of their names indicate, they work accordingly. For instance, the option “where am I” presents you with a 2D map of your current location and when you click over it with the central navigation button, it displays to you the address and geo-reference. You will also be able to save the location along with details attached to it like the place name and number. The only issue is that, we feel is that, the display is a bit on the smaller side for viewing the maps.

Sat nav operation:
If you choose to go to a particular place with the help of the Sat Nav, just enter the town name, suburb name or just the post code number. In just a few seconds, the complete route data will be downloaded, and you will be set to explore. You can move around the map with the numeric keys as was the case of the sat navs in the other Blackberry smart phones. The Google maps take some relatively long time to pick up signals in areas that are heavily built and in that case, by default, it tends to display to you maps that cover quite a large geographical area. In such a case, just move around the map and zoom-in and out will help you better making your work a little faster and easier. Your current location in the map will be indicated by a flashing blue ball and you can go back there by just pressing the ’0’ key. The navigation instructions are given by a female voice that is clear and authoritative but not bossy. In case you misinterpret the instructions, the error sound is just a gentle ping and not some irritating alarm like sound.

Lack of connectivity:

One of the major dis advantages of the 8310 is that, it lacks connectivity. The support for Wi-Fi that was available in phones like Blackberry 8820 is absent in this model. And like every other RIM Blackberry except the Blackberry 8320, this phone too lacks 3G. One of the major disadvantages of lack of 3G is that, you will be limited to the speeds of the GPRS and so, at times web surfing can be horribly slow.

Camera and memory:

A smart phone without a decent camera and memory card slot is sure to fail. The other Blackberry models that were designed without camera keeping in mind the security concerns, but since the Curve is consumer oriented, this feature cannot be neglected.

2 MP camera:
And so RIM has taken a wise decision to include a 2 mega pixel camera and a multimedia card slot to impress its consumer market. Though the fact that the resolution is just 2 mega pixels might limit the definition of the images, but the images taken have strong and natural looking colours. Photos you take can be saved and used as caller ID images. These images can be displayed on any external display of up to 1,600 x 1,200 pixels resolution. Flash is available and you will be able to zoom 200 percent. The flash that is provided is one of the brightest LED photo lights that we would have ever seen and hence taking snaps in low light areas is never going to be an issue. Micro mirror is available for you to take self portraits. In addition, you can also give interesting colour effects to your images.

Memory:
About 64MB of internal flash memory is available and the microSD card slot accepts cards of up to 2GB in capacity. You will definitely need to make you of the slot if you want to make use of the multimedia applications.

Email:

Our review is not complete if we do not list you systems and protocols that this mailing and messaging specialist has. Though, RIM is no longer having the virtual monopoly over the push email services, this device stands tall, unbeatable when it comes to messaging. The email application is very straightforward. It has the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise. It also integrates with an existing enterprise email account, personal email account and new device account. It also has the support for AES or Triple DES encryption when integrated with BES.

Battery:

Most of the smartphones in the current market have very poor battery lives. But thankfully, Curve gives you a good four hours of talk time and two and a half weeks of stand-by time. The satellite navigation feature drains off the battery of the Blackberry Curve like nobody’s business.

Availability:

Blackberry Curve 8310 smartphone is being sold exclusively with Vodafone in UK and the combo of GPS makes the smart phone complete. You will get a full year of Vodafone sat nav service with updates that are quarterly, which is included within the contract of the handset.

The Blackberry Curve 8310 comes with one year limited warranty.

Verdict:

RIM has done a great job with the Curve 8310. The Palm Treo 600v is a heavy competitor to the Blackberry Curve. The 8310 retains the core features that made BlackBerry into a household name and indispensable business tool, full keypad and push email. It also adds some new features that make the Curve more like a multimedia smartphone, a camera, media player and GPS satellite navigation.

Having solid built quality and adequate features why would not we recommend it. The Curve 8310 is an excellent value for money too.

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