In our in-depth BlackBerry Curve 8330 review, Philip Berne checks out the improvements Verizon Wireless has made to RIM's multimedia smartphone.
Review summary of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Verizon Wireless):
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_it00.jpg) Without improving much, RIM has managed to maintain the BlackBerry Curve's status as a compelling device. The interface on Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Curve 8330 is more polished and clean looking than the original model, and the menus are a bit shorter and less daunting. The calendar has been cleaned up, and the media interface has been slightly improved. Otherwise, the Curve 8330 on Verizon packs all the standard BlackBerry features, which is a good thing, but we'd still like to see more. Other carriers, especially Sprint, are more likely to pack extra IM clients onto their BlackBerry devices, and we'd like to see an improved Web browser, like the Opera browser, make it's way to this device. But for calling features, battery life and even navigation, this phone is hard to beat. Release: May 2008. Price: $200.
Pros: Best looking BlackBerry yet, with a polished interface. Excellent battery life. Sharp navigation sensor.
Cons: Keyboard kind of small. Call quality could be better. Web browser renders messy pages. Camera horrendous.
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Full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Verizon Wireless) Review:
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Design - Very good
The RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 on Verizon Wireless is not only the best looking Curve we've seen, it's one of the most attractive business smartphones we've used. We were fans of the original design on AT&T, but the new Curve has improved upon the original in some very nice, if subtle, ways. The exterior gets some sleek black accents, all painted in a soft-touch black finish that we love to see on phones. It's an easy device to hold for calling, and the full-QWERTY keyboard makes for fairly easy typing. It could be larger, as we sometimes pressed adjacent keys by accident, but it's quite usable.
The interface has also seen some steady improvements in the generations of BlackBerry Curve phones that followed the original, released almost a year ago. Verizon Wireless has taken the greatest strides in polishing the heavily-textual menus and cluttered icons, providing them with a clean look that seems less like a UNIX workstation, and more like a modern smartphone. The interface could make better use of the phone's 2.5-inch screen as many screens had a row of icons on the top or bottom, but didn't do much with the rest of the space. Still, almost every app and feature has seen some slight improvement, even the boxy calendar, which now has some appealing color accents.
Calling - Very good
Call quality on the BlackBerry Curve devices has always lagged a bit behind calling features, but this still remains a very good phone for day-to-day calling purposes. In our voice tests, calls sounded a bit muddy, and callers reported tones that sounded extra deep and bassy, to the point that low voices were difficult to understand. There is an option to enhance the audio, boosting either bass or treble in calls, but this seemed to affect only the Curve's earpiece, and not the microphone. Our area is normally a Verizon Wireless dry spot, but our BlackBerry Curve 8330 review unit managed two to three bars consistently. Most impressive, though, was the talk time we got on the Curve. Though RIM low-balls their estimate at four hours, we were delighted to get more than twice that talk time, managing a single call that lasted almost nine hours. BlackBerry phones continue to dominate the market in terms of battery life.
For calling features, the BlackBerry Curve 8330 packs all of our favorites. We like that the phone searches the address book for contacts when we start typing a name at the standby screen. The phone also features an adequate, though not exceptionally loud speakerphone. Bluetooth for handsfree is present, and conference calling was easy enough to accomplish. All of these features require some menu digging, though, and we'd like to see RIM abandon the deep menus for some top-level soft keys, especially for features like the speakerphone and conference calling.
Messaging - Good
For straight BlackBerry messaging, the Curve has the standard mix of e-mail and enterprise messaging options. BlackBerry Internet Solution can handle up to 10 e-mail accounts, and these are integrated nicely into a unified mail app. SMS and MMS messaging are both present, as well. For instant messaging, however, the BlackBerry Curve 8330 only comes equipped with RIM's own BlackBerry messenger, which is fine for business users who might only be messaging BlackBerry-equipped colleagues, but since this is more of a consumer smartphone for Verizon Wireless, we would have liked to see the phone come equipped with more IM clients. At the very least, we would have liked a direct link to download free IM client software, but instead IM users are required to find a third-party app to download.
Scheduling - Very good
The calendar on the BlackBerry Curve 8330 on Verizon Wireless is improved over the original Curve. It's still fairly basic, but it looks smoother than before, with some nice color accents that make it easier to read. Though the phone packs support for Outlook's calendar and RIM's own BlackBerry Enterprise Solution, it still isn't as feature-rich as a Windows Mobile phone paired with an Exchange ActiveSync solution. We're constantly inviting attendees to appointments and meetings, and that's one feature we haven't seen matched on another breed of smartphone, even RIM's BlackBerry. Still, the menus have been pared down a bit for this iteration of the Curve, and the entire scheduling app is friendlier overall, thanks to the clean design improvements.
Web browsing - Mediocre
A year ago, we might have been more forgiving of the messy, jumbled layouts we got from the BlackBerry Web browser, but we've seen much better mobile browsers in the past year, so we expect more. The browser didn't choke on complicated pages, but layout was very messy. We like the browser's Page View feature, which lets you zoom out a bit and find the section you want, but this was simply a rebranded zoom. Navigating with the trackball should also be much quicker. We found ourselves constantly flicking the ball to navigate a long page. Either RIM needs to improve the trackball experience, or return to the older thumbwheel, because the current setup is not an improvement.
Music - Good
The best thing about the music experience on the BlackBerry Curve 8330 is that the phone has a 3.5mm port, so we were able to use our standard headphones. This shouldn't be a big deal, but since most music phones require complicated adapters or special headphones, it sets the Curve apart. Unfortunately, the rest of the music experience is simply average. The Curve has the newer BlackBerry media menu, but this is hardly more than an interface change, it doesn't add much functionality. Stereo Bluetooth worked well, but we are really craving an improved BlackBerry media transfer experience, on par with the iPhone / iTunes combo. The phone lacks Verizon's V Cast Music Store, but we hardly missed it.
Navigation - Very good
Verizon Wireless' version of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 uses VZ Navigator, but unfortunately it's not the newer VZ Nav 4. That means the phone won't benefit from the new traffic updates and better location based services, but we still found this phone to be a competent navigator. It found us quickly in our New York offices and had no trouble following us home to New Jersey. Unfortunately, VZ Navigator is a sluggish, ugly looking piece of navigation software, and it didn't do the best job of updating the directions as we went off course. It often took some deliberate action on our part to change the route. Still, the spoken directions sounded very good, though they could have benefited from a louder speaker.
Camera - Mediocre
There was a time when RIM didn't include a camera on their BlackBerry devices, and perhaps that was for the best. Image quality on the 2-megapixel camera was dismal. In our test photos, there was hardly an edge left unfeathered or blurred. Details were almost non-existent, and colors looked washed-out. The video recorder was no better, with a watery quality to videos and compression artifacts that marred the recording.
Price and availability
The BlackBerry Curve 8330 is available from Verizon Wireless for $200 with a two-year contract agreement. A mail-in rebate of $50 is available when signing up for a qualifying data and voice plan.
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