BlackBerry Curve 8900 Review

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 means business from the word go. Not only does the phone get a complete makeover, it does bundle a whole new set of features to satisfy the business customers. RIM has constantly developed its handsets to meet the demands of the consumers and Curve 8900 is another step in the same direction. The main competitor of the phone from the Nokia clan is E71 that has been doing quite well.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 specifications :

• Dimensions : 109 x 60 x 13.5 mm
• Weight :  110 g
• Display : 2.4″ TFT with 480 x 360 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, HSCSD
• WLAN : Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 3.2 MP with autofocus and flash
• Card Slot : microSD
• GPS : Built-in with A-GPS support
• Approx. price : $550

Design, Display and Keyboard

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 gets an elegant design with comparatively small dimensions and weight than older BlackBerry models. The design is sophisticated and the build quality is solid. The phone is easy to carry around even in your pockets. The trackball is easy as use and have a navigation deck around it. Overall the new design adds elegance to the 83xx series of Blackberry Curves that have not been known for their designs but the Curve 8900 does a satisfactory job.

The earpiece is located centrally above the display with the LED status indicator on its right. Then there are the Call and End keys along with Back and Menu keys for navigation. The trackball is packed between the latter two keys. There is a special key on the left that can be assigned a custom function. The right side too has such a key along with the volume rocker keys and the 3.5 mm audio jack. The top of the handset hides the power keys and the silent key which are hardly visible. The bottom of the handset only has the microphone pinhole.

The 2.4″ display has a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels and a 4:3 aspect ratio. This translates to excellent display quality with vivid colors and high brightness and contrast levels. Very few phones int the market boast of high resolution on a small screen size. In direct sunlight, the visibility is great and the text is very much readable.

The Curve 8900 has a physical QWERTY keyboard that has generous spacing between the keys. Typing is a pleasant experience on the phone with good ergonomics. The keyboard has a four row layout with the numeric keypad situated on the left. The keys are of the same size except for the space bar. Wide spacing in between the keys make way for a pleasant typing experience.

Music Player and Camera

There isn’t too much to expect in terms on multimedia features from a business phone of its stature but it does deliver goods on that front. The music player can sort songs by artists, genres, albums etc. It also supports album art and has preset equalizers. The interface on the device isn’t amazing but it is pretty usable. There are no custom equalisers but you get quite a few preset ones to change between. When running in background, the home screen does not display any information regarding the track being played. The audio quality on the device is very good for a business class phone.

The 3.2 MP camera on the Curve 8900 has autofocus and LED flash. The interface however, is utterly disappointing as it is cluttered. Searching around for options can take up quite a bit of time. Also a portion of the  screen is always occupied by the menu, reducing viewfinder visible area which is annoying. The interface usability is limited by the unavailability of shortcuts and digging around menus for settings can be painful. There are not many manual settings to play around with though. Geotagging is however enabled, thanks to the inbuilt GPS receiver. The image quality is below average for a 3.2 MP phone and casual photography is what best fits the camera.

Web Browser and Organiser

The web browser for the device is an amazing piece of software and does an excellent job. Non-touch screen browsers have faced tough competition from the touch screen ones and this one surely does a good job. The trackball navigation is super smooth and QWERTY input is fast. Zoom can be user configured and panning is very easy that uses the virtual mouse cursor. Rendering issues are none and the browser displays all websites neatly with perfect fit. There is no Flash support on the browser, disappointing to say the least. High resolution of the display plays its part by accommodating more stuff on the small screen. Overall an excellent browser.

Organiser, the prime feature of the phone has been well thought out to include all the necessary applications required in day-to-day tasks. The calendar supports all the three views and tasks can be easily added. Mobile Office is bundled letting you view Documents, PowerPoint files, Excel sheets. PDF support does not bundled and application needs to be purchased separately. Some of the other applications include Tasks, To-do manager, Notes, Voice recorder, Alarm etc. The Alarm clock application allows you to set only one alarm at a time, plain ridiculous. Overall the organiser is great with a few niggles.

Pros :

• Great design
• Solid build quality
• Excellent display
• Built-in GPS
• Great web browser
• Excellent organiser

Cons :

• Poor camera quality
• No 3G
• No PDF viewer application installed
• Single alarm

Final Thoughts

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 brings in some nice changes to the design to make it look more appealing to the users, something Blackberry Curve series is not known for. The feature set is decent enough to attract the business users to upgrade from the older Blackberry model. The solid build quality, excellent display, great web browser and excellent organiser are some of its positives. It lacks 3G and camera performance is not up to the mark. The QWERTY keyboard is impressive especially. Overall, a complete package and well worth the price tag. The other alternative to the phone that you can consider buying is Nokia E71, that has its own set of pros and cons.

Rating : 4/5