RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 Review – An Entry Level Blackberry Device
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Dedicated media control buttons, 3.5 mm phone jack, good call quality.
Thumbs Down:
No GPS and 3G. You cannot store applications on the external memory and internal memory is all you get.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband)
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: EDGE, music player, camera
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
BlackBerry Curve 8520 has a 2.64 inch TFT LCD display which gives a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, 16-bit (65000 colors). The phone has 32 polyphonic ring tones in MIDI and MP3 formats. The phone comes bundled with BlackBerry Handheld Software.
There is internal memory of 256 MB and you can further expand it by microSD cards.
1150 mAh lithium ion battery gives talk time of 270 minutes and stand by time of 408 hours. RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 has an 1150 mAh lithium ion battery which gives talk time of 270 minutes and gives standby time of 408 hours.
For music the file format recognized is MIDI music files, AMR-NB, eAAC+, AAC+, AAC-LC, WMA10/WMA9/WMA9 Pro and MP3. And for video the WMV (Windows Media Video), H.263 video and AMR audio, H.264 and MPEG-4
The 2.0 mega pixel camera can take pictures of resolutions of 160×120, 320×240, 640×480, 1280×960 and 1,600×1200. The video player has resolutions of 320 x 240 (QVGA) and 176 x 144 (QCIF)
Razzle Dazzle:
RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 is the same as 8900 when it comes to looks department. It is the same in height(4.3 inches), width(2.3 inches) and thickness (0.5 inch). But this phone is a bit lighter than its predecessor and the exterior of the phone felt cheap plasticy.
Inside Dope:
RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 is an entry level phone from Blackberry and we thought this was just a trimmed version of 8900. It doesn’t have GPS and high resolution that the latter had but offers the core features inside are the same and so is the performance. The two features are also sacrificed but give you a lower cost product.
The cost of this phone is $129.99 with a two year contract but if you shell out $20 more you will get the 8900 which has more features. But the most amusing part is Walmart is giving out this phone for $48.88 with a 2 year agreement.
The resolution of the 2.46 inch display has 320X240 pixels and has support for 65,000 colors. The smaller resolution is bit of a let down considering this is a smart phone and it shows its inferiority when you see images and videos. But apart from that the display is bright and clear; the text can be read easily. You can change the backlight time, theme, brightness and font size through the settings.
Below this display is the keypad which sports a new feature – an optical trackpad. We were skeptical of the trackpad since we have been comfortable with trackball ever since the days of Blackberry Pearl but the trackball was equally comfortable to use. Around the trackpad there are end and talk keys, back button and menu button.
We first saw the trackpad in Omnia and this trackpad too was equally responsive and easy to use. You can adjust the sensitivity of the track pad through the settings in the menu.
There are buttons on the top of the device for controlling the multi media playback which according to us is great ergonomics. You can simply dip a finger in your pocket and change the tracks without taking out the device from the pocket. You can also control video from these buttons. The play/pause button can also be used to as a mute button while on calls. Presence of 3.5 mm jack was great because it lets us plug in our choice of headphones without the hassles of a discrete adapter. The phone is great for music and we would have said the same about videos had the resolution been great.
On the sides of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 there is a volume rocker key, 2 buttons to bring up any application that you want, micro USB port and head phone jack.
The QWERTY keyboard on the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 is quite similar to what we have seen in 8900 but they keys are a bit smaller. Again we must say that the small keys will lead to uncomfortable typing and there will be lots of mishits. We have tested lots of QWERTY keyboard and we must say, comfortable keyboards are quite rare. But we put the blame on the small size of the phone rather than pointing the finger at manufacturer for deliberately making uncomfortable keyboards.
The RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 comes bundled with a gig of microSD card, AC adapter, wired headset, USB cord, recycling envelope, software disc and reference manual.
The RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 lacks 3G and GPS but we won’t call it a deal breaker because this phone has a lower price and has been marketed as an entry level smart phone and as said earlier, this phone has the same great core features that the 8900 has. This phone has speakerphone, quad-band world roaming, smart dialing, voice-activated dialing, speed dial, conference calling and multimedia and text messaging. Presence of Bluetooth 2.0 lets you pair up head sets for wireless handsfree call experience. Other features for Bluetooth are serial port, dial-up networking, video/audio remote and audio source.
The RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 only supports EDGE which is a bit disappointing; it took about a minute to load site and 10-15 seconds to load the mobile version of the site. A 1.5 MB file takes about three and half minutes to download.
You can add up as many contacts as you like, as long as you are not running out of internal memory. A single entry can take multiple e-mail address, phone numbers, job title, home and work addresses, etc. For photo ID you can pair up a photo for a contact so that his face flashes when he is calling you or you can give a unique caller ID to a contact. Grouping of contacts is also supported.
When it comes to messaging, the phone can sync with BlackBerry Enterprise server of your company and there is also support for Novell GroupWise, Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Domino to deliver real time corporate e-mail. There is support for IMAP4 or POP3 which lets you sync up to ten e-mail accounts. The phone comes pre loaded with instant messengers likes Google Talk, AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo and ICQ.
There is an attachment viewer which lets you check attachments that come up with your e-mail. It can open Microsoft Excel, Word, Corel WordPerfect, PowerPoint, GIF, PDF, JPEG, etc. DataViz’s Documents to Go Suite lets you read and edit documents but it is only the standard edition, you will have to buy the full version separately if you want to make new files.
Other applications that you might need include alarm clock, calculator, voice recorder, task list, calendar, etc.
BlackBerry’s Desktop Software which is there on the software disc lets you sync your media and data files from your computer to the Blackberry 8520 but there is no such support for MAC, users of this platform have to use PocketMac for BlackBerry which is a third party application. RIM has promised to give a BlackBerry for Mac software soon.
All the applications can only be stored on the internal memory which is about 256 MB so be care full about what you are putting in. You can also download application for social networking like MySpace, Flickr, Facebook and also games and applications from the catalog. You can put more memory if you want but the microSD card slot is located behind the battery cover of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520.
Blackberry has been generous when it comes to music playback and although they have not been as good as what music players deliver, we have been pretty happy with the quality. The formats recognized are MIDI music files, AMR-NB, eAAC+, AAC+, AAC-LC, WMA10/WMA9/WMA9 Pro and MP3. Music quality was pretty good with the bundled head set and the buttons on the top of the phone to control the playback. For video only MPEG4 H.264, H.263 and WMV2 clips are playable. The photo viewer supports JPEG, BMP, PNG, WBMP and TIFF files.
Picture quality was pretty good with the 2 mega pixel camera and it would be a crime to ask for 3.2 MP or higher camera on an entry level smart phone like this. But don’t buy this phone if you are a shutter bug freak especially when there are lots of 5 and 3.2 MP camera phones lurking around which give you a better quality. The camera can record video and it has a 5x digital zoom. The resolutions for video is 320 x 240 (QVGA) and 176 x 144 (QCIF)
The RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 was tested for call quality and we found it to be quite good. There were no problems of dropped calls, no distortion and the handset didn’t attract any background noise to give clear call quality. Our friends too gave similar results; they could hear clearly what we were saying.
The speaker phone calls were a bit hollow and distant. You can also pair up a Bluetooth head set with this phone for handsfree and wirefree experience. We tried the phone with some headsets, pairing up was fast and voices were clear.
RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 has an 1150 mAh lithium ion battery which gives talk time of 270 minutes and gives standby time of 408 hours.
Nitty Gritty:
RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 is RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 minus GPS and larger resolution. But a cut down of $20 is bit too less for this and we recommend you go with 8900 even if you are an entry level user.
