Blackberry Curve 8300

BLACKBERRY CURVE 8300 - REVIEW FOR APPROVAL

The new BlackBerry seems to be a blend of Pearl and 8800. It is definitely NOT AN ONLY BUSINESS PHONE.






About the phone -

Form Factor Candybar;

Performance -

The BlackBerry Curve runs on a 312MHz Intel XScale processor.As with most Berries, the Curve is responsive and performs most tasks with good speed. The BlackBerry 8300 has 32 megs of RAM (used like RAM in your computer) and 64MB of flash memory for storage. Before loading data and applications, the Curve has 21.8 megs of free storage. When you first setup the phone, it will ask you if you wish to delete languages other than English, and after doing so you will have 21.8 megs of free memory.


Operating Frequency and Reception quality -
Quadband - GSM 850, 900, 1800 , 1900;

The BlackBerry has EDGE for data but unfortunately no 3G.
Call quality is good and volume is loud by GSM standards.
The speakerphone is clear and loud. The Curve has good but
not stellar reception.

As such it is not recommended for areas with marginal coverage.

Connectivity -
HSCSD, WLAN, IRDA - No

GPRS, EDGE , BlueTooth , USB - Yes


Dimensions -



Height (mm) 107
Width (mm) 60
Depth (mm) 15.5
Weight (g) 111 g

Battery -
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1100 mAh
Standbytime (h) Up to 408 h
Talktime (m) Up to 4 h

The Curve has an 1100 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's user replaceable. It ships with RIM's standard world-friendly charger with fold-down prongs. As with most GSM BlackBerry phones, the Curve has excellent battery life (being EDGE-only helps). Push email generally greatly reduces battery life on competing smartphone platforms, but somehow RIM manages to give us phones that last 2 to 3 days on a charge. Claimed talk time is 5 hours. Standby is 22 days-- very long by smartphone standards.

Messaging -
SMS Yes
Email Yes
MMS Yes

Camera -
Camera Yes, 2MP,
1600 x 1200 pixels
Video recording Yes
LED flash and self portrait mirror

The Curve features a 2 megapixel camera with 5x digital zoom and a built-in flash along with a self-portrait mirror. The camera application offers three picture qualities and three still image resolutions (1600 x 1200, 1024 x 768, 640 x 480), and it uses the screen as the viewfinder. The photo quality isn’t the best you will see on a 2 megapixel camera, but photos have good amount of useful image data that can be corrected using Photoshop or RIM's photo editing tool on the desktop to yield a good image.

Display -
Color display, 65000 Colors
Display width (pixel) 320
Display height (pixel) 240
LCD Type Color
LCD Size (pixel) 320 x 240

Like the BlackBerry 8800 series of smartphones. the Curve has a QVGA (320 x 240) TFT display that’s very bright, colorful and crisp. It has a light sensor that adjusts to ambient lighting conditions, and you can turn this feature off -- though it works well except in near-dark rooms where the display sensor opted for too little backlight. The screen is capable of displaying 65k colors and is extremely bright at 100%; too bright! The screen is viewable outdoors, more so than Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC) and the Palm OS Treo PDA phones.

Memory -
64 MB flash memory with 21.8 megs available for storage and program installation.
Memory card not included
Supports microSD card slot


Multimedia -
Ringtones Polyphonic (32 channels), MP3
Polyphonic Yes

The Media Player application has been jazzed up with a skin compared to the 8800's dull media player. There are 4 icons for music, video, ringtone and photos viewing/listening. The music player has options for shuffle, genres, play by artist and play by album. The image viewer is fairly fast and you can use it to set any image as the home screen background. the ringtone manager at The media player plays MP3, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ and WMA files. You can use the microSD card to store music and video. Sound is decent through the mono speaker and very good with the included 3.5mm stereo headset with inline mic.

Java & Games -
Games - Yes
Java - Yes
Voicedialing Yes

Misc. features -
Interface USB
Handsfree Yes
Vibrate Yes
Phonebook Capacity Yes, Photocall

Bundled Software -
BlackBerry push email client. BlackBerry IM client.
VoiceSignal voice dialing software,
BlackBerry Maps and TeleNav navigation software, media player for your MP3 pleasure and video playback.

PIM apps include address book, calendar, tasks and memo. Also Alarm, voice note, calculator, Password Keeper included. BrickBreaker game is bundled.

BlackBerry Desktop software for PC included for syncing and software installation.

Sales Package -

Stereo Headset
USB Cable
Travel Charger (lots of connector options)
Leather Pouch
Software CD & Manual

PROS AND CONS

The Internet Service keeps a constant eye on whatever POP3 accounts you ask it to and delivers emails it spots to your BlackBerry as it retrieves them. Of course how rapid this is will depend in part on the efficiency of the sender's, and your own, email server(s) and in part on network coverage. Either way, you can force a check for new messages whenever you want to.

Pros -

1. Good Screen
2. Browser supports both - WAP and HTML
   
3. PEARL trackball navigation,
   
4. QWERTY Keypad,
   
5. 3.5mm headset jack
6. Spellchecker
   
7. 2MP Camera,
   
8. Small Size makes it comfortable to hold for voice calls
   
9. Stylish,
   
10. Blackberry Maps Application included
    
11. Well Priced - Arnd Rs. 24.5k

Cons -

1. No Memory Card Provided,
   
2. Memory Card not hot-swappable,
   
3. No Protection for Camera lens and flash.
4. Absence of GPS Antenna
5. As SIM card slot is under the battery, and so unfortunately is the microSD card slot, so you'll have to power down the phone to insert or remove a memory card

VERDICT - A GUD REPLACEMENT FOR OLDER BUSINESS PHONES