RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 smartphone review

We’ve had RIM’s Blackberry Curve 8900 for around a month now, and have had the chance to get to grips with all its features. It’s a smart looking handset, like a mini-me version of the Blackberry Bold – similar QWERTY keypad, chrome highlights, and high quality finish.

At 2.4-inches, the Curve 8900’s screen isn’t the largest we’ve seen, but it’s sharper than average, and offers bright and colourful images. With a widescreen aspect ratio and a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels, it’s also good enough to view web pages, albeit less comfortably than touchscreen devices such as the Apple iPhone or HTC Touch Diamond 2.

The QWERTY keypad is small but perfectly formed, offering a positive typing action and responsive keys that make it easy to write texts and emails. Those with larger fingers may take a little while to adjust, but accustomed typing at speed is easy.

Below the screen you’ll find the now default Blackberry rollerball for navigation, along with a menu, back and call and end keys. On the right-hand side of the 8900 you’ll find a 3.5mm audio jack, volume controls and a camera shutter button.

There’s also a micro-USB socket to charge and sync with your laptop. The top offers neatly integrated lock and mute buttons, with another key on the left-hand side to activate voice control.

The Curve 8900’s menu is sensibly laid out, with a set of oft-used icons at the bottom of the home screen, and an easily accessible menu screen for all of the other functions. The design and layout will be familiar to existing Blackberry users, although the wealth of functions can be a little intimidating to the uninitiated.

Connectivity on this phone is surprisingly good, as long as you don’t mind the lack of 3G/HSDPA. Using EDGE technology, we found web pages still loaded quickly, and it never proved an issue in daily use. The inclusion of Wi-Fi is a welcome one, and Bluetooth is also in place, allowing wireless data connections.

Software includes a mobile office suite, letting you edit documents on the go. Like the Blackberry Storm, plugging the Curve 8900 into the mains allows you to use it as an alarm clock, with a large mock-analogue clock face appearing onscreen.

Google Maps lets you get the most out of the integrated GPS chip, although the 3.2-megapixel camera is average at best. Internal storage is limited, at 256MB, but it’s easy to add more via microSD cards.

The combination of a reasonably large 1400mAh battery and the lack of 3G means the Curve 8900 also outperforms the Blackberry Bold when it comes to battery life, and we managed to regularly get a couple of days use between charges.

Overall, RIM’s Blackberry Curve 8900 is a highly impressive device, and one of the best non touchscreen handsets we’ve seen recently. It needed to be, with competition in the form of Nokia’s excellent E71, but it certainly doesn’t disappoint.

For more information, visit Blackberry.