Blackberry Curve 8330 Review

Ever year or so I get it in my head I should have a smartphone. I'm an IT guy, the type of person you'd expect to see with a do-it-all cellphone, checking e-mail or surfing the web when I should be paying attention in a meeting. That familiar feeling of smartphone lust hit at just the right time about a month ago: my current phone started having major issues, I was due for a new-every-two replacement, and the Blackberry Curve 8330 was about to be released. Fates had conspired, and I bought one. Three days later I returned it, and here's why:

1. Lack of Mac support - not that most of you would care, but it mattered to me. My contacts were in two places, my old phone and my laptop, which is a MacBook Pro. Blackberry has a Mac application for syncing, called PocketMac, it just doesn't support the 8330 yet. Their solution? Go buy "The Missing Sync" from MarkSpace for $39.95. Wait, didn't I just spend $170 for a new phone, and now I need $40 to make it sync like it supposed to? Either that or retype all 100+ contacts...

2. Text and missed call alerts - this was a big one. What happens when you get a phone call or text message and don't acknowledge it? Most phones will beep a certain number of times, and then continue to beep once every couple minutes until you acknowledge it. I LIKE this feature. Say I take a shower and miss a call. I don't want to have to look at my phone every time I walk away from it for five minutes to make sure I didn't miss something, but this was the case with the 8330. This may be a Blackberry thing, but the maximum number of alerts it would provide was three, i.e. new text message, beep, beep, beep..... and never again. Ever. I missed several text messages over my three day test period because of this.

3. Poor web browser(s) - I knew this would be an issue, the default Blackberry web browser is not a full HTML browser, so it stinks. I downloaded Mini Opera and tried it out, after reading it was the best browser available for the Blackberry. Mini Opera had two zoom settings, the entire website zoomed out to be blocks of color and black splotches, or zoomed in too close to be useable.

4. No e-mail options - When I set up my e-mail, it asked for the mail server name, my account login, and password. That's all. I really wanted to be able to customize the interval at which it would check my mail, maybe every 30 mins, or not until I manually want to, not constantly. You haven't lived till you're woken up four times in one night, just to read about where I can find cheap v1agrA online. There is also no option for maybe some privacy time, i.e. don't check e-mail when I'm sleeping. There is a shutdown option, but that turns the entire phone off during the specified time. Being a fire officer it would be very bad to not have my phone turned on when I'm on duty at night. I ended up disabling all new e-mail alerts.

The phone did have some very good points, on Saturday I did some work on my truck, replacing the grill. I texted someone about it, and they asked me how it looked. I snapped a picture and e-mailed it to them in seconds. Wow, that was amazing. And for texting and e-mail it was great to have a full keyboard that felt good, and after a day of using I was pretty speedy with. The form factor was nice too, seemed a good balance of size between having a full keyboard while still easily fitting into your pocket or the palm of your hand. Unfortunately the cons outweighed the pros on this one. I was trying to like it, I really was, but the death blow came on the Sunday after I had received my Curve.

Now, a little background, the Curve has been out for a while on other carriers, AT&T, etc. On Sunday the 11th RIM announced the Blackberry Bold, to be released in June. So, my brand new (yet year old to everyone but Verizon and Sprint) phone was going to be outdated in a month. Check out the details of the Blackberry Bold release dates and pricing here. Speculation on the Blackberry Thunder continues as well, the supposedly all touch screen model.

In the meantime, while I try and decide what cell phone I'll be trying next, my beat up old Chocolate is still kicking with the help of a new battery. I know I may have been harsh on the Curve, but everything has its good and bad. I hate the touch-sensitive buttons on my Chocolate. I can't tell you how many times my cheek tries to create a new contact while I'm on an active phone call. The Curve 8330 just didn't suit my needs, but it may be perfect for others.