Featuring a liquid silver finish, clean lines and soft edges, the BlackBerry® Curve™ 8300 smartphone is the smallest and lightest BlackBerry® smartphone ever to come with a full QWERTY keyboard.It’s packed with incredible features*, including a camera, BlackBerry® Maps, a media player, expandable memory, Voice-Activated Dialing, tethered modem and trackball navigation. Plus you get all the core functionality you’ve come to expect in a BlackBerry smartphone — email and text messaging, instant messaging, web browser and advanced phone functionality.The BlackBerry Curve — it’s your connection to everything that matters.
| Size: | 4.2 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches (LxWxD) |
| Weight: | 3.9 oz |
| Display: | Font size (user selectable), Color display, Backlighting, Light sensing screen |
Oh, we’d hate to be a RIM BlackBerry 8800 owner right now. Just months after the 8800’s release, Research in Motion has released a sleeker and sexier model that’ll make you wish that you had waited a while longer–the world of technology can be so cruel. The RIM BlackBerry Curve (aka BlackBerry 8300) is the smallest and lightest full-QWERTY BlackBerry to date, and we’re absolutely stoked on the design. It feels more like a cell phone with the compact dimensions, yet you still get the advantage of a full keyboard for easy messaging. We want to be clear that the BlackBerry 8300 is more about the revamped design, rather than new features. The device does offer a few improvements, such as a spell-checker for e-mail and an upgraded 2-megapixel camera, but it still lacks the big items on a our wish list, namely Wi-Fi and 3G support. And to be fair, the BlackBerry 8800 may still be a better fit for power business users with its GPS functionality and lack of a camera (an increasing security concern at workplaces). That said, for consumers and mobile professionals, the BlackBerry Curve is a beautifully designed and well-rounded device that delivers great e-mail functionality, a little multimedia fun, and solid performance.
The BlackBerry Curve 8300 is the latest chic smart phone to sashay down the cell phone runway. Petite and gently rounded at the corners (as its name suggests), the Curve does for Research In Motion’s line of QWERTY-keyboard-equipped handhelds what the Pearl did for RIM’s standard keypad devices: Add a badly needed dose of style.The Curve 8300’s compact design seems to mesh with its QVGA display far better than do the larger 8800 series devices, which use the same display. The display itself is generally bright and readable, even in direct sunlight. It even has an auto-brightness mode that boosts the backlight’s power beyond its normal limit for when the phone is used in bright conditions.The full 35 key QWERTY thumb keyboard is very easy to use, in the RIM tradition. Though the keyboard is a bit narrower than the 8800’s, the keys are large, well-spaced and domed– and thus require little if any adjustment if you’ve been using prior generation BlackBerry phones. Thankfully RIM has returned to white backlighting from the 8830’s hard-to-see blue, though the entire key lights up dimly rather than our preferred brightly lit letters as on the 8800. Keys are the standard BlackBerry affair with the shift, ALT and symbols where they always are.
A more consumer-oriented cell phone/PDA hybrid than most of its siblings, the Curve packs such multimedia features as a 2-megapixel camera with built-in flash and 3X digital zoom, and new desktop media management software developed in cooperation with Roxio.It’s a world phone, with support for all four GSM frequencies (800, 850, 1800, and 1900 MHz). If only it supported broadband, too… The BlackBerry Curve is compatible with your company’s BlackBerry Enterprise server with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise to deliver corporate e-mail in real time. In total, the device can support as many as 10 accounts, including POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts, and there is an e-mail wizard on the device to guide you through the setup process. An attachment viewer is also onboard to open popular file formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, PDFs, JPEG, GIF, and more, and we were able to receive and open all files. Other messaging options include text, multimedia, and instant messaging, although the latter is limited to the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger client.The Curve adds a new spell-check functionality for e-mails. As you would expect, the feature will look for any spelling errors in your messages before they’re sent and offer alternatives to misspelled words. Spell-check is also available for memos, but not for text messages.
Specifications:
Navigation: Trackball, QWERTY (Keyboard), Keyboard backlighting
User Interface: Intuitive icons and menus
Memory: 64 MB flash memory, Expandable memory – support for microSD card
Microprocessor: No
Modem: Embedded RIM® wireless modem, Tethered modem capability
Email Integrations:
- Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft® Exchange
- Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for IBM® Lotus® Domino®
- Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Novell® GroupWise®
- Integrates with an existing enterprise email account
- Integrates with existing personal email account
- Integrates with optional new device account
Device Security:
- Password protection and keyboard lock
- Support for AES or Triple DES encryption when integrated with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server
- FIPS 140-2 Validated (FIPS validation)
- Optional support for S/MIME
Network:
- North America: 850 MHz GSM/GPRS networks
- North America: 1900MHz GSM®/GPRS networks
- Europe/Asia Pacific: 1800MHz GSM/GPRS networks
- Europe/Asia Pacific: 900MHz GSM/GPRS networks
- EDGE networks
