The Blackberry 8300
The Blackberry 8300
After achieving success with their earlier models, Research In Motion (RIM) have launched their latest cell phone, the BlackBerry Curve, also known as BlackBerry 8300.
It is the smallest and lightest BlackBerry smart phone ever to come with a full QWERTY keyboard, petite and slightly rounded at the edges, much like its name. It features a liquid black and silver finish, measuring 4.20×2.36×0.61 inches in size and has a mass of 3.92 ounces. Lined with soft grip edges, it becomes very to use and handle.
Besides the full QWERTY keyboard with a spell checker, the BlackBerry 8300 has a trackball system with good sensitivity for easy navigation. It’s an ideal multimedia phone with huge 2.5 inch LCD screen having a 65000 color display and a resolution of 240×320 pixels.
This combination provides good clarity for photo and video applications. The BlackBerry Curve has a light sensor that automatically adjusts the LCD screen brightness based on the external lighting conditions.
This proves effective in increasing the battery standby time by using charge according to the need.
It has got some more excellent to store. It has a 2.0 megapixel inbuilt digital camera with 5X zoom, including an LED flash and self-portrait mirror. Photos can be clicked in three resolutions, even as large as 1600×1200 pixels. Also, photos can be shared via a Bluetooth, MMS, email, USB data cable or a microSD card.
For the music lovers, this phone has something more. It supports most of the audio file formats like mp3, WMA, WAV, MIDI, and AAC. Videos with file formats like mp4, MOV, AVI, and 3GP are also supported. The inbuilt 64 MB memory and an expandable memory card slot facilitate the storage of such large files. For better music experience it has got 3.5 mm headsets and the battery has a long standby time of about two and a half days.
Since BlackBerry aims at convenience for business professionals, it carries email and PC sync needed for the busy individuals. It has a Tethered modem capability that helps the phone to be used as a modem for your laptop.
It consists of an integrated attachment viewer that supports files like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pdf and many more. It is compatible with the popular Personal Information Management (PIM) software. It is enterprise friendly with advanced security features, remote address book look-up, wireless synchronization with corporate PIM tools and single mailbox integration.
Since the BlackBerry 8300 runs on EDGE packet data, it’s bit slower than a 3G phone. So it is bit disappointing when it comes to downloads and streaming data over the internet. Web pages too, take a bit longer to load.
But still, with the connection, email, messaging and voice calls work out great and give a feel-good experience. As improvement, the BlackBerry 8300 could use some Wi-Fi or 3G enhancements.
The phone package comes with stereo headsets, wall charger, user manual and the case. The unit is currently available in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. It’s available for purchase without a service plan too.
Overall, the Curve is a seductive alternative to other candy-bar phones with wide aspect-ratio screens, and, with the right price it is the hot PDA cum phone at the moment.