While RIM is marketing their first touchscreen Blackberry as the first Blackberry for fun as well as work, all reviews seem to point out that it's not that great for either. The touchscreen just felt tacked-on.
So what does this say about their other devices? Well, I'm here to find out.
Our company uses Blackerry phones on the Sprint PCS network almost exclusively (we switched from T-Mobile, and there are still some stragling T-Mobile users). I've had a T-Mobile Pearl until I switched over to the Sprint side, choosing the Curve instead.
It was the full QWERTY keyboard that got me to switch.
The Blackberry Curve 8330While the "Pearl" was called so because of the pearl trackball, the Curve doesn't seem to be super curvey or anything to make it deserve such a name. It does, however, have the pearl trackball I loved on my first Blackberry. It was much better than the side wheel of previous Blackberries.
Ergonomics of the Blackberry Curve is nearly perfect! The volume buttons flank the right side, while the mini-USB and 3.5mm headphone/headset jack flanks the left. That's right - the Blackberry Curve uses a standard USB port to charge and sync data, as well as a standard headphone jack so you won't need an adapter to use your standard stereo headphones for music!
Of course, this means you will have to deal with special headsets, since the standard for these devices are 2.5mm. It's something I can live with, and I think the trade off was worth it.
The trackball is textured for better grip and tactile feel when moving the ball. The four buttons around the trackball just make sense (call, menu, back, and end call). The ball can be pushed in to select items.
The only negative I have to say about the buttons are the left and right side buttons used for (by default) camera and voice dialing. I often activate these two apps by just grabbing the phone. Whoever though of putting these buttons there should be shot. Thankfully, you can assign the buttons to nothing, and they won't do anythng if pressed.
The most confusing button is the one on top. There is a engraving of a speaker with a line on it. On first glance, you would think it's to mute the ringer or speaker, but it does nothing by pushing it. However, if you hold the button down, the phone goes into "standby", which basically means the screen turns off. This is much like how the Palm acts when you just turn it "off".
The keyboard is small, but is as comfortable and easy to use as the Palm Treos. In fact, the Blackberry Curve is about the same shape and size as a Treo, but I can honestly say it's a bit thinner. This gives the Curve a sleeker and more modern feel compared to the Treo series.
Overall, the Blackberry OS is very responsive. It doesn't contain any unecessary animations to smooth out transistions like the iPhone, but then again, it doesn't need it. It is much faster than Windows Mobile. In fact, the Blackberry OS to me seem like a good upgrade for Palm users. It's actually more responsive than Palm's antiquated OS!
The majority of apps relies heavily on the pop-up menu, adding extra steps. That is the price to pay when you don't have a touchscreen.
PhoneAs a phone, the Curve is quick and snappy, unlike the Windows Mobile platform. Dialing a number doesn't give you an akward pause with each button press, which is a relief!
The phone interface isn't as slick and stylish as other smartphones (such as the iPhone or the HTC
Diamond and
Touch Pro), but it does the job. You see your own phone number listed, as well as a place where dialed numbers appear. Below that, you have a history of your calls. You also get a clock, date, email/voicemail/battery/profile indicators, and signal bars. It sounds like a lot, but the indicators are icons that doesn't take up much space.
Calls are wonderfully clear and crisp using it as a handset. The speakerphone does sound a bit hallow, but most phones do. The speaker is located at the top where there is two small slits. The sound is surprisingly good for such a small opening. All callers tell me they can hear me clearly using both the handset and the speakerphone. They do tell me I sound a bit further using the speakerphone, which is understandable.
CameraThe 2.0 MPixel camera is pretty good considering it's on a phone. The maximum 1600x1200 resolution is high enough to bring out details you don't normally see on phone cameras. While the camera is great outdoors, photos taken indoors tend to be too dark. The LED flash doesn't do much to light up the area unless you're reall close (about 2 feet away). Any further, and it becomes ineffective.
The digital zoom is nicely controlled with the trackball, but since it's digital, it actually crops the larger picture, giving you a lower resolution photo, literally. The photo can get as small as 640x480 when zoomed in even though you originally had the resolution set to 1600x1200.
Video lets you record at a maximum resolution of 240x172, which is disapointingly slow. The video is choppy, even in good outdoor lighting, and picture quality is actually worse than those cheap VGA web cams.
You can also invoke the LED light when capturing video, but again, the "flash" light is pretty much useless thanks to the short range.
WebThe browser on the Blackberry is practically the same as the previous generation's, except that it does allow for you to zoom in and out. It tries to render pages as you see them on a desktop browser, and thanks to the trackball, it's easy to navigate and click links. However, the browser heavily relies on the pop-up menu, which makes it feel like you have to do extra steps to enter URLs.
By default, it render pages in that special "phone" way, wrapping things around in an akward way. You can change it to "Page View", which makes it more like how a desktop browser would render it. However, it is hard to read pages without zooming in, and you will be panning around a lot. I honestly prefer the mobile rendering (called "Column View"), since I don't have to pan around.
Speed is pretty good on Sprint's 3G EVDO data network. However, it render pages slower than the actual data stream.
I rather use the Opera Mobile 9.5 browser found on the Touch Pro than using the Blackberry browser. Of course, my favorite mobile browser can be found on the iPhone/
Touch.
DisplayThe most amazing thing about the Blackberry is the screen. At 320x240, it's not the highest resolution found on a phone, but it is still very sharp and clear, and a joy to look at. It's not the best to look at photos or videos, but the icons, calendar, and browser are matted perfectly for it. Reading email is it's forte, and even at the smallest font, it is comfortable reading emails on this display.
Email, Contacts, and CalendarOf course, when I think of Blackberry, I think of email. And it's no mistake! Blackberry really made push deliveries of email! It is no wonder why people and companies who rely on emails make the Blackberry the defacto platform to have.
While most individual users will use BIS (Blackberry Internet Service) for their personal email accounts (such as with their own ISP, or with Gmail or Hotmail), the Blackberry really shines with BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server). Our company have an actual BES server that interfaces with our Exchange email server. It makes it easy to manage hundreds of users. Of course, the downside is that it is about $70 for a single license (we buy in bulk, but it works out to that amount).
We do get occasional issues where users may not get their emails in a timely manner or we'd have to re-activate their Blackberries for it to work, but the problems are few enough to make it worth our while.
Shortcut keys make the device a dream to use. If you don't know any of these shortcut keys, you will tear your hair out using email on the Blackberry. For example, I sometimes find myself searching for that unread message (indicated by a number on the Email icon). All you need to do is hit the "U" button and it will go o the first unread message. Same if you accidently scroll to the bottom of the email list when it was in your pocket. Before, I though I had to keep scrolling until I get back to the top. Turns out, you can hit the "T" key to move to the top. Hitting the "B" key does the opposite, putting you on the bottom.
Just like with the browser, the email application relies heavily on the pop-up menu. You will need to go through this menu to create, delete, reply, and forward emails.
You can open certain attachments, such as PDF, Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, and JPGs. However, not all word DOCs and Excel spreadsheets open up correctly. We still haven't figured out why that is.
When syncing to Exchange server via BES, you also get your Calendar and Contacts transferred to your phone! This makes it easy for you to keep your PIM info in a central place. We are starting to see this concept on the non-corporate front, such as Windows Live and Google Calendar/Contacts.
The Calendar makes it easy for you to view your appointments, but just like with other apps, it relies on the pop-up menu to change, edit, or add appointments. Same can be said for Contacts. The nice thing is that if you change or add an entry, it gets synced to your Exchange server, which also reflects on your work PC's Outlook.
Add-on AppsFor some reason, 3rd party apps are few and far between compared to Palm, Windows Mobile, and the iPhone, despite the Blackberry's popularity. I found Google Map to be the only one I really cared for.
It's real easy to install apps. You just browse over to the site where you wish to install the program from, download it, and it just installs automatically. No app store here!
Battery LifeFor a smartphone, I was shocked at the amazing battery life! Even with heavy email use, about a day of standby, and a few voice calls lasting about 5 to 10 minutes each, the battery indicates about 50% charge left!
Having a light OS have it's benefits, besides responsiveness. The battery life is even better than the Palm Treos! Of course, almost anything have better battery life than Windows Mobile - even a rock.
The UpshotThe interface isn't as slick and beutiful as the iPhone, but it's quick, responsive, and gets the job done. It feels like more of a closed platform compared to other mobile platforms out there, but everything you need is already included.
Email is the Blackberry's main forte, and honestly, that's all a business person really needs on their phone besides voice, calendar, and contacts. The Curve's formfactor and keyboard make these activities a joy to use.
