RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 – Best Blackberry Device To Date

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

New OS, improved browser, upgraded camera, Wi-Fi and EDGE support.

Thumbs Down:

No 3G, camera shutter lags.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: GPS, camera, music player, media player, EDGE.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

2.4 inch TFT LCD of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has resolution of 480×360 pixels and supports 65,536 colors. The candy bar phone comes with a full QWERTY keyboard. The phone has 3.2 mega pixel camera, which is capable for video recording. Important features are flash, auto focus, image stabilizer and 2X digital zoom.

Video formats supported are WMV, MPEG4, DivX5/6 (not fully supported) H.263 video clips, XviD (not fully supported), and DivX4. Audio formats supported are MP3, WMA9/WMA9 Pro/WMA20, eAAC+, AAC, MIDI music files, AMR-NB and AAC+.
The phone is powered by 512 MHz and 256 MB ROM. The phone comes with a 256 MB microSD card and the phone supports expansion cards up to 16 GB. The 1,400mAh lithium ion battery gives 5.5 hours of talk time and 14 days of standby time

For email there is POP3/SMTP/IMAP/Microsoft Exchange/Blackberry Connect/Lotus Domino.  RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 doesn’t have 3G but only wi-fi and EDGE.

Razzle Dazzle:

We are all aware of what Blackberry phones usually look like. This phone is not much different from the previous phones of the manufacturer but this product is thinner than other Blackberrys. A thinner phone means it will fit more easily your tight jeans pockets. The phone is 4.2 inch high, 0.5 inch thick, 2.3 inch wide and it weighs about 3.8 ounces which is not too heavy. The phone is more sturdy and solid looking than the other Blackberry and it is sure to stand the shocks when you keep it in the pocket and go around in a crowded bus or alike. Looks wise the phone does look a lot similar to other Blackberrys and the outer body is still made of plastic but when you hold it and feel it, you will notice the difference.

Inside Dope:

Blackberry is known to make good messaging phones and it has good features like QWERTY keyboard for messaging. While it might look little boring, college students and tech freaks might be coy over the design of the phone, Blackberry says that it is made so to make messaging easier. These phones continue to be the favorite of business men who need to access e-mails on the go.

The display of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 is 2.4 inch TFT LCD which gives a resolution of 480×360 pixels. we thought the screen size and the resolution is a bit low and you will have to scroll a bit more when viewing web pages or reading text documents. The small screen is maybe due to the space hogged by the full QWERTY keyboard in the bottom. It is not a touch screen device but the display of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 is one of the best even considering that it is just LCD, not AMOLED, the icons and the text look very bright and vibrant on the screen. You might get confused when you access the menu of the phone because all the icons of applications look more or less the same.

Between the QWERTY keyboard and the screen are a few buttons like talk and end buttons (the end button is also the power button of the handset), back button, trackball navigator and menu button. The buttons are easy to use and you can easily use the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 with one hand.

Beneath these buttons are the full QWERTY key board, now all keyboard on Blackberry devices look more or less the same. This key board is not that good, as the keys aren’t big and there is not enough segregation between the keys. Lots of mis hits are possible when typing on these buttons but we are not complaining because there isn’t much room for bigger keys on a mobile phone. But there is good backlighting for the keys so you can type easily in the dark. The number keys are in red against the alphabetical keys which are white.

On the sides of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 there is 3.5 mm phone jack so you can plug in your favorite head phones if you are not happy with the bundled set, volume rocker, microUSB port and the camera button. There are two more tiny buttons of lock key and mute which are on the top of the phone. The SIM card and the expansion card for memory are behind the battery cover. We would have liked the memory card slot to be somewhere on the sides or below the phone for easy access. But at least it is not behind the battery, like in some phones.

The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 comes bundled with USB cable, travel charger, head set, 256 MB memory card, case, reference manuals and software disc. The phone has built in GPS with both cellular triangulation and satellites for finding your position.

The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 now runs on a new OS BlackBerry OS 4.6.1.114 which promises some new features and improvement on the old. The phone has DataViz’s Documents to Go Suite with which you can edit PowerPoint, Word and Excel documents, but you can only edit the documents with the standard edition. You will have to purchase a premium edition if you want to create new files.

Other features on the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 include calculator, memo pad, calendar, task list, password keeper, etc. You can also go online and purchase more games and applications that are available in the catalog of Blackberry. This model of Blackberry may not be compatible with third party applications that you have bought for earlier Blackberry devices.

One of the most lamentable features on the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has been the browser which has always been a let down on an otherwise feature rich Blackberry handsets. But with the new OS we expected better browser and we were happy with the web browser that this new phone had to offer. The browser supports viewing YouTube clips and RSS feeds. There is function for zooming in and out which you might have to use a lot considering the small size of the screen. Browser has been made better but it is nowhere close to the reigning king – Safari of the iPhone.

On of the biggest disappointments of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 is the lack of 3G connectivity, T-Mobile has rolled out its 3G network and we don’t understand why this phone doesn’t have one. With the lack for 3G you will have to resort to EDGE or Wi-Fi. The latter is fast and we had no problems connecting. Loading a website will take about 15-20 seconds which is not that slow.

There is no limit to the number of contacts that you can store in the memory of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 as long as you don’t run out of space. A single entry can take a number of phone numbers, home and work addresses, e-mail ID, job title, etc. You can put people in groups depending on how you know them; you can also give a unique ring tone to an individual. You can also take pictures from the built in camera and attach a picture to a contact.

Blackberrys has been known to have a decent music player and the  RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 support audio formats like MP3, WMA9/WMA9 Pro/WMA20, eAAC+, AAC, MIDI music files, AMR-NB and AAC+. For video, the formats supported are WMV, MPEG4, DivX5/6 (not fully supported) H.263 video clips, XviD (not fully supported), and DivX4. You can play videos in full screen, the quality is good but then it is marred by the smaller screen. We watched a MP4 video and found the video quality was quite satisfactory.

For music there is playlist creation, search function and repeat/shuffle modes. We liked the fact that we could sync the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 with our iTunes library. For getting music from audio CDs there is a soft ware provided on the disc – Roxio Easy Media Creator. For storing music and videos, the phone comes bundled with 256 MB memory and you can further expand it to 16 GB.

Audio quality is good but not as good as Blackberry Bold. Speaker phone is below average so use the bundled head set or buy good set of head phones like Bose for good music experience.

Blackberrys usually have a 2 MP camera and they have refused to upgrade till now. This RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 comes with a 3.2 MP camera with flash. But we got dark photos even with the flash on the camera.  Image stabilization, 2X zoom and auto focus are all supported on the camera phone. There are three sizes for picture and three settings for quality. The GPS feature which comes built in on the phone lets you geo tag your pictures.

Pictures are good when shot in plenty of light but low light conditions are not good for taking pictures. Photos looked a bit low quality for 3.2 rated camera. Video quality is definitely worse and they looked grainy. Camera has shutter lag so make sure you hold the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 for a while after you have clicked pictures to avoid damaged pictures.

In spite of these draw backs the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 scores when it comes to messaging. For voice messaging the phone has voice activated dialing, conference calling, smart dialing, speaker phone, quad band world roaming, speed dial and multimedia/text messaging. The phone gets even better when it comes to e-mail messaging. The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has real time corporate e-mail delivery as you can sync it with BlackBerry Enterprise server of your company and it also has support for IBM Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and Microsoft Exchange.

If there are attachments in the e-mail you can open it with the built in viewer for attachments which has support for file formats like Excel, Corel WordPerfect, PowerPoint, Word, JPEG, PDF, GIF, etc. You can sync the phone to deliver emails from up to 10 accounts with the support for POP3/IMAP4 accounts. We tried setting up and it was lightning quick. The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 also comes preinstalled with messengers like AIM, Yahoo, Google talk and Yahoo.

Call quality on the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 was a bit disappointing with a little background noise being attracted while talking on the phone. But it isn’t a deal breaker you can clearly hear what others are saying. There is a feature called Enhance Audio which boosts the bass or treble but there wasn’t any significant change or improvement in the call quality.

Speaker phone calls are worse because they attract a lot of background noise even by the standards of speaker phone. Volume is plenty both on speaker phone and handset calls but there is a bit of hollowness while using the speaker phone. With Bluetooth support you can pair up the device with a wireless headset.

The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 is powered by a 512MHz processor which is quick with opening applications and we didn’t experience any lag. You can also do multi tasking and the phone will run fine as long as you don’t test the processor by opening all possible applications at the same time. Even though overall the phone is quite fast, the camera lags a bit and you also have to hold the camera for a while after you have captured pictures.

The 1,400mAh lithium ion battery of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has enough juice to power the phone for five and half hours of talk time and about 14 days of standby time.

Nitty Gritty:

RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has improved a lot as compared to the other Blackberry phones which shows the hard work put in. Right from the revamped OS to the upgraded camera and improvement of the browser we will rate this as the best Blackberry phone to date.