Welcome to the PhoneArena.com review of the Blackberry Curve 8330. The 8330 is the CDMA variant of the original Curve, the GSM 8300. There are some notable upgrades in the CDMA version such as integrated GPS above the memory up to 96 megabytes and most importantly high speed data via the EVDO revision zero networks.
Today, we are looking at the two different Curves offered by a major US carrier’s Verizon on the left and Sprint on the right. As you can see, the designs of the two devices are very similar. However, the housing colors are different. The Verizon has a bright silver whereas the Sprint’s Curve is darker more refined titanium. Accents are the same both from heavy rubbery ring that winds the phone.
On the back, you can see the mirrored chrome surface that acts as the camera housing. The camera for the Curve is a 2-megapixel camera with an LED flash. The front of the phone features a QVGA display, track ball navigation, and a full QWERTY keypad. Another that we did notice is that the Verizon screen is just a bit brighter than the Sprint screen. Here, we are looking at the proprietary home screens where Verizon is white and the Sprint is black. But when you have the same theme, you can tell a slight difference on the two.
We have to say that we really like the Sprint design better. The darker surface makes the phone look a lot more professional whereas the bright silver reminds us of the early days of cellphones especially with a strong contrasting black keypad that accents. As you look around the phone, you’ll find a 3.5 mm headset jack at the top left. This is nice and it allows you to use real music headphones. One of the big features of the Curve is the multimedia functions and music playback is a big part of that. Below that is a standard micro USB port which serves as both the data and charging port. There’s also a micro multifunction button on the left side as well as one on the right side.
At the top of the right side is the volume rocker. Both of the multifunction buttons are user assignable which means that the user can assign just about any application to them. We like a while the customization options on the Blackberry OS and that is just one of them.
Our biggest complain about the design of the 8330 is the micro SD placement which is underneath the battery. As you can see at the back on the phone, there are golden silver metal pieces down at the bottom. The gold pieces actually served as connectors to the optional desktop charger. Pressing the metal button, releases the back door and it easily slides up. Getting the battery out however is not quite as easy. You have to actually get your thumb under the top of the battery and push down towards the bottom of the phone to pry it out.
Only then do you see the microSD slot. You have to slide the little metal retainer and the cargo pop up and that way you can slide it in and out. Again, push it down and slide the retainer to the right and the cards back in.
The card can be accessed via mass storage model on the Sprint Curve but it’s not something that’s extremely functional and we wish they have moved the slide to the side like found on the Pearl. Blackberry devices are first and foremost renowned for the email and messaging capabilities and the Curve is no different.
The full QWERTY keyboard is simply the best that we’ve ever used. It’s just almost the perfect size. It is a touch narrow for bigger hands but there’s a fine line that RIM has to toe between the width of the device and the size of the keyboard.
We feel they have done a good job juggling the two and the keyboard is very easy to use. The buttons have plenty play so you know that they even pushed. The keypad is slightly curved as you can see and the buttons themselves have a little bit of typographical feel to them so you know which your buttons you are pushing.
The Curve keyboard is definitely a standout part of the device. The track ball navigation however is still something were not a big fan of. As you can see when the main menu pulls up here, we can only move left and right, and up and down. There is no side-to-side movement. Furthermore, there is no wrap around so when you get to the end of the menu line you cannot go to the next line. You have to scroll over and then scroll down.
In the browser, you are able to move 360 so the track balls a little bit better but overall we really don’t like this track ball navigation. One of the things we like about RIM’s operating system is the customization. Here, we’re taking a look at the preloaded Verizon theme. This theme chooses their five shortcuts orientated along the bottom of the screen. You can scroll the track ball and choose your option. Bring up the main application menu you have accessed to all the application on the device. Let’s say we want the browser to be in shortcuts. All we do is simply find the browser, choose move from the contacts menu and move the browser anywhere on the top five.
Going back to our home screen, when I'll see that the browser has been added there and the calendar has moved out. This is very heavy feature and it allows the users to put their most used shortcuts directly on the front screen. We should note that this is theme specific however and if we change themes, the top five will be reordered to whatever course allotted for that theme. Changing back to this theme at our top five will be in tact though.
Now, we’ll take a look at this front home screen which is slightly different. As you can see, they have gone with the sides theme. However, the same principal applies when we can reorder to put whatever we want in that top five. The address book is another essential feature of the phone. There are a couple of people loaded in here and as you can see, you want to type a letter such as J and it will eliminate anybody that doesn’t match that but it’ll also work for last names. So if we type it in, we’ll only come up with some mirror here. The happiest focus of any of RIM’s devices is messaging. There is a unified messaging inbox to show incoming emails, text messages, and events such as missed calls. In addition, any configured email accounts have their own mailbox as well.
Composing a message is simple, from the message inbox you can hit the contacts menu and choose the compose an email pin text message over the Verizon curve and SMS message.
Let’s say we want to compose an email. Right now, we don’t have any account just configured but if we had two or three different accounts we could choose what account we want to send it from. From there, you can simply start typing in the name so we type J and then write up all our Js. Let’s say we want to send this to John. You can add multiple recipients and carbon copy it as well and then you simply type your email. It’s that simple. We love how easy the messaging is on the Blackberry Curve.
Another essential element in any smart phone is the calendar and other personal information management features. The Curve is not slash here and the calendar is very simple and powerful. When going in, you get the day view but you also have the option to be evaluated for month. Adding appointment is as simple as choosing new. You can type in the subject, add the location, you can choose to make an all day event, change of the date on the duration, and can even throw those time zones if you’re travelling. You can set a reminder, you an also set your time as different options such as busy or over the office or tentative. We currently can be said for appointments and you could do it daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Lastly, you can also mark them as private and then notes so that you remember what your appointments are.
Other things we can do with the Curve is the task list and see that we have a couple here. What’s going in check out sync? Let’s see if we finish this off. We change our status to complete it. As you see, we set this at higher priority or created the due date of last week. If you want it too, we can set ourselves a reminder or reoccurrence for this. We also sent ourself a note to make sure that we have the required materials. Since we made a change once we go back, it’ll process to save the changes or discard. We’ll see and that you can see that task has been checked of.
The more basic application is the memory pad. This basically acts just as a notepad. There are no real options here. It just gives you a list and you click on them and you can add text. It’s as simple as it gets but it is a factor. The voice on that recorder is basically a voice version of the memo pad. You simply record your note and once you stop you have the option that’s positive and keep going. We stop it and we can see that there are different voice notes restored.
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