Blackberry Curve 8320

First off, I am using this phone. My sister is using this phone too. We both have a gold-colored Curve. I have also own(ed) or borrowed for extended periods of time (no less than 90 days) the following phones: Razr V3r, Razr 2 V8, Rizr Z3, Nokia 7610b, Motorola Rizr Z3, Samsung Blast, Samsung Katalyst, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6133, Sidekick Slide, Motorola V360, Nokia 6263, Samsung t219, Samsung t209, Samsung Stripe, Samsung Beat, Samsung t819, Samsung t809, Blackberry Pearl, Motorola W490, Motorola K1 Krzr, and a lot more phones I can't think of. Think of it this way, if T-Mobile had it before, I probably owned it or used it at one point in time so if you ever want me to write a special review for you, just let me know! Also, if you want to know anything else about the phone that I haven't mentioned, just ask or just tell me and I'll be more than happy to answer it (I do it all the time on Yahoo! Answers).

Overall: [6/10]

Cons:
-No 3G
-Reception (discussed later)
-Phone must be off to insert/remove microSD card
-All the little things (that really add up and irk you really quickly over a very short period of time)

Audio:
This phone is pretty clear. I find that it isn't as good as a Nokia, let alone a Motorola phone with crystalspeak. I find that it is intermittent on both of the phones when you're driving down the road but this is something that went away on my phone while I was using my Samsung WEP200 headset but did not go away when I used the same headset on my sister's phone. Even so, no echoing sound, no bubbly underwater sound, no worries. I think this phone's audio is the way it is because of the way it's engineered. I don't know, I only use the phone, not reverse engineer it.

Speaker:
Actually, this baby gets pretty darn loud. I was able to put my friend on speakerphone while driving around on the interstate. It was pretty clear, and I would argue that its speaker volume is good enough to rival the Nokia 5300 (except it's not going to break so easily). I really like its speaker, it's really clear.

Battery Life:
On the flip side, the battery life is pretty good. Maybe not as good as Motorola v195 or anything Motorola since the newest razr models I guess, but the battery was optimized for the person on the go using their phone intensively. I listened to my music using my Motorola S9 headsets while taking calls (on the same bluetooth device) and a whole bunch of other things and actually, my headset needed to be recharged before my phone did! That was cool. However, it should be noted that in the last 10-30 minutes of your phone shutting off, the screen goes darker and all of your open connections get closed (you cannot call, text, use wifi, receive emails, etc). So, maybe it's a deal breaker on the battery life, who knows? Just so you know, I find the screen's brightness fairly bright so I just leave it at the darkest backlight setting of 10 out of 100. It's basically the same as 1 out of 10 in brightness settings.

Calendar and Alarm:
Okay, so whoever said for you to get a Blackberry because of its ability to sync with Outlook obviously never heard of Nokia PC Suite. It's true that you can sync your contacts with your MS Outlook, but my feeling on this is that the calendar on the blackberry itself is only popular because it lets you view the calendar in agenda view by default.. I don't like it though because if you have an alarm set and you want to change the alarm type, you would have to change it in the profile. If you're like me and unpredictable in terms of which profile you will have next, you will have to change the alarm for each and every profile you expect to use when the calendar alarm goes off. Me, I have to make sure I changed them all. Just expect to spend lots of time here.

Appearances:
Okay, so I have pretty big hands and for me to text on any ol' flip phone is sometimes okay and sometimes not. On the Blackberry, definitely not cool. I find that I hit the 'g' button all the time when I aim for the 'h' button as I type "going home to see my family" or "home for the holidays, you?" or any other such messages. It really bugs me because I can type much faster on a standard phone's keypad using t9. Buttons aside, the phone's got a bit of a curved shape on the back to try to fit in your palm (it's very slight so you won't see it so well with your eye but you'll feel it in your palm). The pearl ball button lights up too (just white though, not multiple colors like the pearl phone). Still, it's the kind of phone that would appeal more to a man than to a woman I think (unless you get the red one, but that color is fairly unisexual). I chose gold because it speaks to me more than the titanium silver color. Honestly though, I don't like any of the colors available for the curve right now.

I will admit that the back cover is horribly designed. There's a silver button (on both phones) that you push down to release the back cover. If that silver button ever goes missing (and believe me, it's really easy to make disappear), you will never get another back cover to ever stay on your phone ever again. Then again, this is true of all blackberry phones since the original pearl 8100 so beware!

Maybe it's just me, but when I throw a microSD card into the phone, I expect to not have to turn off my phone (ie: Nokia 6263). Worst case scenario, I expect to take off the back cover (ie: Nokia 5300 or Motorola Rizr). Not only that, the phone takes more than 2 minutes to boot up (my old 1998 computer doesn't take that long and it has viruses that slow down the startup sequence!). Also, to change ringtones, you have to edit the specific profile. Okay, not so bad, right? Well you have to edit the specific instance that you want to edit that ringtone too! Oh, and you can't do it through the options menu, you have to go to the profile, the advanced options (kept very subtly kept beneath the menu of available profiles) and you have to press the blackberry button of the highlighted profile that you want to edit. It gets worse. You have to go to which instance, for example, you have to go to "phone" and change the ringtone there. You also have something called have "level 1 messages." What the heck is this??? Well, let's put it this way: you won't ever use it.

How about something more practical, like music? Well guess what, you can't make playlists directly from your phone or even in the music app. You can only do so on the computer. Oh and one more thing about that, you use a MicroSD card for your phone but you have to format it and make sure you place your files into the right folder because if you don't, you'll never be able to access it even though your phone says it's there (there's a music, ringtones, video, images folder, and then a blackberry folder with those same folders inside of the blackberry folder... go figure).

Internet Surfing:
It's no iPhone in terms of internet surfing. It's got a built-in web browser and a built-in wml web browser. One is for the cell phone internet, the other is for the real internet. Even so, you pull up ebay and you still can't pull up your seller's account because it can't do flash so well and cookies are limited. In fact, the only real difference that I have noticed between the two browsers is that one can do javascript and pull the entire page to display as if it worked on a computer whereas the other is still the mobile version of the internet. Even so, I prefer and suggest Opera Mini if you're wondering.

Overall Conclusions + Misc:
Okay, so reception is big to me in a phone (what's the point of having a phone that doesn't call?). That aside, I find it very annoying that while I am listening to a song, I don't have dedicated music player buttons that would allow me to go forward or backwards tracks. Not only that, but when I lock my keypad, my volume keys aren't locked so the next time I answer my phone, I have to keep adjusting the volume. Only somewhat though because the volume keys don't stand out so much when its in a case. I also don't like it's looks and the buttons are terrible. Also, the pearl ball in the center doesn't feel like it's made for human hands. I mean, it doesn't, it really doesn't. I've kept my phone locked away for a few months whilst using a Nokia 6263 but on my sister's phone, the ball is not responding to her so well and I've seen this happen fairly frequently for blackberry phones that have that trackball. Oh yeah, and to note, you can pop that ball out and clean it with a cotton swab and alcohol and about half the time, that will fix the problem. For me, I'd just prefer not to have to do that. It's a phone, not a car.

One more thing about this phone is that you can program it to automatically turn off and turn on which is a great feature to have to save your battery life and refresh your phone like your computer (restart anybody?).

So, you see what I do like and dislike, but ultimately, I would only recommend this phone to a user that NEEDS to get emails but hate the slow software found on a Windows Mobile device (even with the accelerometer thing and tweaking it to run fast, it's still crap-slow if you ask me). Personally, I don't think I'll be getting the storm or the bold when they're released, unless my company makes me. It doesn't require you to be an advanced user to use this device but is highly recommended. If you want a phone just for music, dialing, and calling, get a Nokia 5310 or Nokia 6263. I did. Sounds clearer and you can do bass boosting too. If you need the synchronization functions with your email, calendar, etc, Windows Mobile phones are much better. 

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