The BlackBerry Curve offers great multimedia performance coupled with traditional BlackBerry features
The BlackBerry Curve 8900, also known by the name Javelin, is the thinnest and lightest phone with a full QWERTY keypad from the Canada-based RIM (Research in Motion). The 8900 packs a bevy of features in its rather small form, and also promises to offer great multimedia performance along with it’s traditional strong business features such as push email service and a full web browser. Let us run this device through its paces to see how well it performs.
BlackBerry Curve 8900
Battery
Charger
Stereo headset
1GB memory card
USB data cable
User manual
Design and Construction:
The BlackBerry Curve 8900 measures 109 x 60 x 13.5 mm and weighs 110 g. The device is very compact for something having a full QWERTY keypad and also feels very light in hand.
” The front side of the phone has the call speaker at the top center with the status indicator LED at its right. Below the speaker is the 2.4″ display, which is in landscape mode. Below the display is the navigation trackball, which is now the standard means of navigation on all BlackBerry phones (except the Storm, obviously). It is flanked by the menu key and the back key on its left and right respectively.
On the extreme left and right are the call and end/power key, respectively. Below these keys is the full QWERTY keypad, which is an indispensable part of every BlackBerry phone.
On the right side of the phone are the 3.5mm headphone jack at the top, the volume rocker key, the camera shutter key (whose function can be changed from the settings), and the microUSB port for connecting the charger and the data cable.
On the right side of the phone is the shortcut key, which is by default assigned to voice dialing but can be assigned similarly to the camera key.
On the top of the phone is the keypad lock key on the left and the mute key on the right, which doubles up as the stand-by mode key with a long press.
On the rear side of the phone is the 3.2 megapixel camera lens along with an LED flash on its side. Below the camera is the loudspeaker grille and the battery cover. The memory card is placed under the battery cover, so you have to remove the cover every time you have to change cards.
I found the design of the 8900 very appealing, with its all black design and the matte silver on the front edge of the device. It had an understated elegance to it, which makes it look attractive without being overtly stylish or boring, which I’m sure business users would appreciate.
As for the build quality, the phone felt pretty solid when held in the hand. There were no creaking sounds, and all the parts felt solidly put together. A minor complaint was that the rear cover had a tendency to slightly move in its place, which somewhat spoiled the near perfect build quality of the phone.
The display on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 is a 2.44″, 480 x 360 pixel, 65k colour TFT display. Now, just to make things a bit clear, the resolution of this display is the same as that of the Storm 9500 and slightly more than that of the iPhone display. The Storm display is 3.25″ big while the iPhone display is 3.5″ big. This would give you an idea of how many pixels are crammed into such a small space on the 8900. This gives the 8900’s screen incredible pixel density and makes everything look razor sharp and crystal clear. On top of that, the display has excellent brightness and great colour reproduction capability, which makes for a picture quality that takes your breath away. This is easily one of the best displays that I have seen. It also has excellent sunlight visibility and the display can automatically adjust the brightness based on ambient light intensity. The only problem is that, sometimes, especially in the web browser, some of the fonts look really small, and people with weak eyes cannot comfortably read it. Also, the display does not have any kind of protecting layer so you have to be careful not to break it.The user interface on the 8900 is the same as that on the Bold 9000. The stand-by display has six shortcuts for the important functions of the phone, such as messaging, phone book, calendar, browser, media, etc
Pressing the menu key brings up the main menu, which has the icons arranged in a 6 x 4 grid. You can scroll around with the help of the trackball and then press down to select it. Pressing the menu key again brings up additional options; the back key is used to exit a particular menu item. The phone has just two themes, which only alters the colour of the icons in the menu, although more can be downloaded. You also have the option to change the UI font and size if you want. Overall, the user interface is very easy to use and anyone can get used to it within minutes of operating it.The BlackBerry Curve 8900 uses a trackball for navigating through the menus. The trackball sensitivity can be adjusted through the settings. Navigating the menus with the trackball is fun; however, you can only move up and down and not diagonally through the menu items, which is unfortunate. The keys on the sides of the trackball are large and very easy to press.
Now, coming to the keypad, the 8900 has a full QWERTY keypad. It might sound great, but packing a full keypad in such a small space means the buttons have to be small, which affects their usability negatively. The keys are placed too close to each other, and people with large thumbs who try to press two keys next to each other will find it a problem. Overall, the keypad isn’t great, and it takes getting used to before you can start typing at decent speeds.
All the keys are evenly lit in a soft white light, which can be easily seen in the dark.
The Curve 8900 is a quad band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 handset. For data transfer, it supports GPRS and EDGE, but shockingly, there is no support for 3G. However, it does have Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and USB connectivity.
The call quality in the 8900 was satisfactory with good network reception. The voice of the caller was heard loud and clear at all times. The ring tone volume was, however, a bit on the lower side even on maximum volume, which means that there is a possibility of missing your calls while out on a noisy street.
Messaging is the forte of all BlackBerry phones. The messaging application supports SMS, MMS, Emails, and Instant Messaging. The 8900 also supports the Push Email service like all BlackBerry phones, and to get that service up and running you’ll have to subscribe to the BlackBerry service by calling your service provider. Once enabled, you’ll get your emails delivered straight to your device as soon as they reach the server, just like SMSes, and you can also browse the web on the browser and use the Maps software. Unfortunately, since the keypad is slightly cramped, people with large thumbs won’t be comfortable using it, but otherwise the Curve 8900 lives up to the reputation that the Blackberry devices have in the Messaging department.
Application:
The Curve 8900 comes with office applications built-in. These can be used to open your Word, Excel, or PowerPoint presentations. You can also create new documents; however, you’ll need to buy the Premium version of these applications to do that. Then, there is also a memo pad, a task application, a calculator, and a password keeper. Unfortunately, there is no application provided to open PDF files.
There is also the Maps software to work with the built-in GPS software. It works like the Google Maps software (which you can also download separately) and downloads the map data over the air via GPRS/EDGE. However, since I was not using a postpaid connection, I could not activate the BlackBerry service to use GPRS, which means I could not test the GPS navigation service on the 8900.
The 8900 also comes with a Facebook application and the Google Talk software. It also had three built-in games - BrickBreaker, Word Mole, and Texas Hold’Em King 2. The Weather application connects to the Internet and then shows a five-day forecast for your city.
Web Browsing:
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The Curve 8900 has a full fledged web browser. The browser can be used either over the GPRS/EDGE connection or the Wi-Fi connection. The trackball can be used to navigate around the web page.
During my testing, I found that the page loading speed of the browser is on the slower side, even over a Wi-Fi connection, especially compared to the Opera Mobile browser in Windows Mobile phones or the S60 browser in Nokia phones. The browser also starts lagging on image heavy web pages, sometimes freezing and causing the phone to crash. Also, as mentioned before, the fonts on the web page are quite small, and it is then that you realize that the screen should have been a bit bigger. You can still use the Opera Mini web browser, which works slightly better and faster as well.
Multimedia:
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Blackberry phones in the past were known for their business features only, and were all-work-and-no-play kind of devices. However, recently RIM also concentrated on the multimedia aspect of the BlackBerry devices, which resulted in the recent devices launched being much better all rounders, offering good multimedia experience with their traditional, solid performance in the business field. The Curve 8900 is very much a part of this new trend and offers a startlingly good multimedia performance. Let us start with the camera.
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The camera on the 8900 is a 3.2 megapixel CMOS sensor with auto-focus and LED flash. The lens does not have any kind of cover protecting it though. The camera application can be started by pressing the shutter key or through the main menu. The display orientation remains in landscape mode and the phone, hence, needs to be held vertically. You can adjust the camera resolution, quality setting, white balance, colour modes, and the flash settings. For the video camera, you can choose to have the LED flash remain ON all the time.
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The quality of the camera turned out to be great. The camera captured minute details of a subject, even though it was just a 3.2 megapixel sensor. The colours, however, slightly over saturated, which makes the images less accurate than the original subjects, but more appealing to the eye.
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The auto-focus system works well and is quick to focus on the subject. You can half-press the shutter key on the right, focus on the subject, and then full-press to capture the image, or just press on the trackball once, let the camera focus, and then automatically capture when the subject is in focus. At night, the images that fall within the range of the flash come out well, however, anything beyond is dark and indiscernible.
The media player in the 8900 is well designed and has a good interface. It also supports a wide range of formats.
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” In audio, the 8900 supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, and WAV. In video, it supports DivX, Xvid, WMV, and MP4 formats. The music player can sort music into categories such as Album, Artist, etc. It can also display the album art and has equalizer presets, but with no manual adjustments. There is also a feature called audio boost, which boosts the volume.
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The sound quality of the 8900 is decent, however, the bass was a bit low. Fortunately, you can use the equalizer to compensate for that, but since there is no manual equalizer you cannot really fine tune the music to your liking. The loudspeaker volume was also decently loud; however, the quality wasn’t that great. The quality of the supplied headset is poor for music and is only good enough for calls.
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The Curve 8900 has support for DivX and XviD movies. Plus, there is no need to convert videos. I just dragged and dropped a 700 MB movie file on to the phone’s memory, and the movie played perfectly without any lag. Movies and videos looked great on the high-resolution display of the 8900.
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Battery Life:
The BlackBerry Curve 8900 has a mAh battery. Since our test unit did not came with a proper Airtel or Vodafone SIM card, the data services were not active, due to which certain services such as web browsing via GPRS, GPS navigation, and email service could not be checked. Now, since these are things that a typical BlackBerry user is bound to use a lot, the battery life figure obtained without these is of little value. Still, with other things such as calling, SMS sending, music playback, and videos, the phone easily ran for two days on a single charge. In one test, the phone managed to play a movie back-to-back twice continuously and still had about 20% charge left. And these are high quality 700 MB DivX files that I am talking of, which put much more pressure on the processor.
It is obvious though that the battery life would drop down if you were to do all the things that the phone is capable of, and then the figures won’t be as impressive. Still, I would say it is above average, if not exceptional.
Verdict:
The BlackBerry Curve 8900 is a truly fantastic device. It looks great, has a superb display, a full QWERTY keypad, and offers great multimedia performance coupled with the traditional BlackBerry prowess in the business phone feature arena. Its only faults are lack of 3G connectivity, occasional crashing of the phone software, and a Rs. 26,000 price tag, which is slightly on the higher side. So, although it’s not exceptionally good value for money, it still gets my recommendation for its brilliant all-round performance.
Are you a blackberry fanatic who are looking for a blackberry which offers you with a 3G connection, built-in GPS, a real web browser and Wi-Fi connection? If your answer is yes, Blackberry Bold is probably the most suitable blackberry phone for you? Unlike the other previous versions, this series of smart phone blackberry is not lacking of 3G, so in this Blackberry review, I can say that this is really a great improvement done by RIM( Research In Motion).
