Performance
Typing speed on the small keyboard is as good as you can hope for from such a small device. But delays soon surface once you venture online. The lack of 3G connectivity is noticeable when downloading large attachments or using BlackBerry's idiosyncratic browser. Pages take an age to load and formatting is often annoyingly vague given the wide screen it has to work with.
The Curve is much better at plain old voice calls, with a clear, crisp loudspeaker and -- impressively -- voice dialling that actually works. You can just speak a phone number out loud, at a normal speed and with background noise, and the 8300 will usually recognise it. It's slightly less reliable on contact names from the phone book.
The 2-megapixel camera shows how new RIM is to the whole multimedia thing. It has only basic features and images are miserable, suffering nasty colour tints, blurry detail and dull exposure. The media player is better, with tunes sounding acceptable, especially through decent headphones.
Even without a GPS connection, the Maps application is useful. There are no extraneous points of interest or city guides to clutter up the clear 2D maps, which download quickly and for free. It can pull down cross-country journeys in moments, delivering turn-by-turn directions or a zoomable route map. It's not full GPS with location finding, but then you don't have to wait minutes for lock on, or worry about the battery draining away before you reach your destination.
Battery performance overall was good, lasting two full days of fairly intensive use.
Conclusion
The BlackBerry Curve certainly deserves a wider, consumer market. It's sleek, small and simply effortless to use -- even if the trackball did have us itching for a Missile Command game to play with. But the Curve's push email remains defiantly text-only, the browser is quirky and 2.5G data access just doesn't hack it in today's multi-megabit HSDPA world.
Compare the Curve to Motorola's Q 9, which has blistering data speeds, HTML push email and can edit Office documents on the move, and the BlackBerry starts to look less like a potential CEO and more like a failed Apprentice.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
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User reviews3
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ekaj20 28 December 2011
Good: keypad is amazing! its so nice and easy might take a few hours to get used to
Bad: it took some time to update it to 4.5 os and was abit tricky
Comment: I like this phone, the only thing is its a little slow and dosnt have much memory. its VERY slow and dosnt have much to make it stand out.
darrenha 20 October 2007
Good: Qwerty, crystal clear screen, every app you need, comes with world maps...
Bad: No GPS
Comment: I love this BB. Having had numerous BB's over the years, for work, this one is the best so far....
Sexy looking, so easy to use, has everthing you need, loads and views everything. It really does view any attachment i receive.
Clear sounds, the clearest screen I have seen on any handheld and a very easy to use multimedia package. I can transfer all my music and clips over at the click of a button.
I would recommend to anyone who needs a phone and email on the move.
Linda Cox 7 June 2007
Good: Good sized Qwerty keyboard, easy to snap and email pictures, great media player.
Bad: No GPS
Comment: I've been waiting for this for soooo long - a BlackBerry with a decent camera, media player, and full QWERTY! I got mine a couple of weeks back from an O2 store, and it's fantastic! The screen is large, bright and plays video clips straight from YouTube. It's good enough to view most email attachments I get sent from work, including Excel and PowerPoint, and can load most sites I've tried to browse.
The media player is a bit restricted on the formats it plays, and I've had to buy a £10 piece of convertor software. Battery is good, but I was a bit disappointed with no in-built GPS. I have a separate TomTom unit already so I probably wouldn't have used it much.
There still doesn't seem to be anything simpler for emailing than a BlackBerry, although the new Microsoft Xdas seem pretty cool.
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