BlackBerry Curve 8330
Like many BlackBerry smartphones, the BlackBerry Curve continues to make its rounds with US carriers after two GSM versions paved the way: the BlackBerry Curve 8300 came out last summer on AT&T and the Curve 8320 with Wi-Fi came out on T-Mobile later last year.
The CDMA versions of the Curve finally are here in May of 2008 for both the Verizon and Sprint networks. The two Curves have essentially the same hardware, but are just accessorized differently with each carrier’s branding, software and services. In addition to the 2 megapixel camera, built-in GPS, BlackBerry email software, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, HTML browser and a media player available on both devices, the Sprint version adds Sprint TV, Pocket Express (Handmark Express) and BlackBerry Maps. The Verizon BlackBerry Curve 8330 comes in silver and the Sprint Curve comes in titanium. The CDMA BlackBerry Curve 8830 has support for EV-DO for fast data but doesn’t have Wi-Fi (the 8320 is the only Curve with WiFi support, and only the BlackBerry 8820 on AT&T and the upcoming BlackBerry Bold have both GPS and WiFi).
The Same Look, Different Logos and Colors
The Curve 8330 has the same 2.5″ landscape LCD with QVGA resolution as the previous Curve models. The LCD looks bright and color saturated. The very useable QWERTY keyboard, the call control buttons, menu buttons and the trackball control remain unchanged also. The same goes for the side buttons and the camera cluster on the back. It’s worth mentioning that the Curve 8330 has a 3.5mm headset jack and comes with a stereo wired headset for your MP3/AAC playback pleasure. The Curve’s microSD card slot is convenient for expanding memory but isn’t convenient to get to. It’s under the battery and you must power down the phone to access it. Have fun with that slow boot up time when you have to access the card frequently.
Making Phone Calls and Browsing the Web
The GSM Curve models have slightly above average reception and good voice quality, and the CDMA Curves continue that trend. The reception in strong coverage areas is usually 4 bars (out of 5 bars max) and in spotty coverage areas is 1-3 bars. The Curve 8330 has not dropped a call on either Verizon or Sprint and voice call quality is quite good, and the built-in speakerphone is loud and clear. The BlackBerry Curve 8330 supports Hands free and Headset profiles via Bluetooth, and we tested several Bluetooth headsets including the Nokia BH-902 and the Plantronics Explorer 330. The voice quality was much clearer and louder on the Plantronics than on the Nokia. The DSP worked fine via both headsets and reduced most road noises except wind noise. The range wasn’t good: with the Plantronics Explorer 330 we got 5 feet and with the Nokia BH-902 we reached 8 feet. For voice dialing and voice command, the BlackBerry has VoiceSignal’s excellent VSuite 2.1 voice command software. Voice dialing worked very well without pre-recorded voice tags or voice training and also worked flawlessly over Bluetooth.
Like previous Curves, the Curve 8330 has a full HTML browser that works with not only mobile sites but also full HTML sites. Page rendering is good once you turn on all the page layout support options in the browser, but not as good as the Safari-based browser found on the iPhone and Nokia S60 phones (see photo). It has full page view with a cursor to navigate the page and zoom, and has support for Javascript, cookies, cache and more. But it has some trouble loading relatively uncomplicated layouts such as MobileTechReview’s web site where the Curve rendered only 2 columns out of three correctly while the iPhone and the Nokia N95 browsers render the page in true desktop fashion.
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