Jul 05, 2008 10:56 AM
11712 Views
(Updated Jul 05, 2008 10:59 AM)
Many of you must have read my other reviews and reading this again. Let me tell you this phone was the number #1 rated phone of the year 2007 in the United states. I bought this phone with a US service provider (T-Mobile) and got it unlocked and now using in India.
Service Provider: T-Mobile (In India using with Vodaphone) Operating System: BlackBerry OS (unlike Windows) Screen Size: 2.5 inches (really big!!) Screen Details: 320x240, 65k-color screen Camera: Yes Megapixels: 2 MP Bluetooth: Yes Web Browser: Yes (very intelligent) Network: GSM Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE Special Features: Music, Video playback, voice activated dialing, smartness!!! Biggest of all: WiFi compatible !! Texting and e-mail fanatics have been flocking with use of any Blackberry, ever since the Pearl came out, making the once-stodgy brand sexy. The 8320 Curve is a more grown-up Pearl, bringing a full keyboard but keeping (and improving) the camera, music, and video options that made the Pearl successful.
The earpiece and speakerphone are both loud, and the phone supports both Bluetooth and wired headsets. Call quality is generally very good. The phone's VoiceSignal voice-dialing system requires no training. Battery life isn't awesome, but it's fine. I squeezed at least two days' worth of ordinary use.
The BlackBerry e-mail system is still unmatched. I set the service up with Gmail, Microsoft Exchange Web Access, and Yahoo! Mail accounts within minutes. The e-mail system also supports attachments, displaying picture attachments, and PowerPoints, but it boils PDFs and other Microsoft Office documents down to text. Built-in IM clients let you sign into AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! IM, and Google Talk all at once and all in the background, though only your "mobile" AIM buddies show up.
The Curve is also the best multimedia BlackBerry, thanks to its 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth stereo support. The phone was able to take a 4GB Kingston microSD card to hold music and video, and it comes with Roxio software that automatically transcodes your videos into a format that works on the phone. The device also pops up as a drive on your PC, so you can drag music and photos on and off it. WMA, MP3, and AAC files of any bit rate worked fine, though the Curve doesn't support DRM music purchased from online stores. Playing video, an MP4 file originally encoded for an AppleTV re-encoded beautifully for the Curve and played in full screen without a hitch. A WMV file lost its lip sync during re-encoding.
An integrated 2-megapixel camera, with the usual weak flash, takes sharp shots, but you have to watch out when photographing in backlit settings or outdoors—a bright sky will force the camera to underexpose a darker foreground. Indoor shots were much more balanced.
There's still one glaring point in BlackBerry's software lineup: a decent and affordable Microsoft Office document editor. While you can sync contacts, calendars, tasks, and notes with Outlook using the BlackBerry Desktop software on XP or Vista, and you can extract the basic data from Microsoft Office files received through e-mail, the only option for actually editing Word and Excel documents is Dynoplex's eOffice. That may change soon when DataViz's DocumentsToGo comes out for the BlackBerry platform.
The curve is my best friend and its worth the smartness it carries with it, compared to the Nokia N or E series!! I bet you will like it...
Continuous talk time (cellular): 9 hours 43 minutes.
If you have any questons or concerns on the features, have a look at mine.
