Updated 11 Feb, 2012, 4:06 pm IST

REVIEWS / SMARTPHONES / KASPERSKY LAB

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Mobile Phone

30 Apr, 2009, 10:43 am IST | Shayne Rana | Smartphones

The Blackberry 8900 aka the Javelin, is RIM’s first ever smartphone to come equipped with Wi-Fi, GPS and a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera. We’re guessing RIM heard us loud and clear in our previous reviews of the Blackberry. The Bold was their more serious break into the multimedia with business arena that was followed by their attempt at taking on the iPhone with their 9500 Storm. But here’s how the 8900 fared.

Form Factor
It’s a BlackBerry so it pretty much looks like any other BlackBerry handset expect for the half QWERTY models that are slimmer or the Storm. But there is something in the design that gives a bit of an appeal, at least that’s what we think. It has a certain sleek lining to it. As compared to the Bold, there’s a visible difference. The best way to put it would be – the Bold has a sophisticated and elegant look whereas the 8900 comes off as a sportier hep-er looking model.

The Curve 8900 is equipped with a smaller display (2.4-inches) as compared to the Bold’s 2.6-inch TFT LCD, but manages to incorporate a higher resolution i.e. 480 x 360 pixels with 65k colors. The Black Trackball or ‘Black Pearl’, as it were, looks better with this handset and we still believe this is the best form of mobile UI navigation, bar none. Its full QWERTY keypad is well laid out and with segregated keys like this, typing is also a whole lot easier in comparison to the Bold. On one side of the handset is a singular key for voice activating features and on the other side is the micro USB connectivity port, Camera key, volume/zoom keys and a 3.5mm handsfree cum earphone socket.

The camera with its LED flash is located at the rear, and though the handset doesn’t have a hot swap slot for the microSD card, you won’t need to remove the battery to get to it. However you will need to remove the rear panel to access it, not that that’s a big deal though. The handset is lightweight and that makes it easy to carry.

Features and Performance
Interface and OS Performance
The interface is unchanged. It’s no different from the Bold’s UI so rest assured it’s fast and fluid. There are no lag or jerky motions while navigating. The icons are large and clearly depictive of what their features activate. Though the processor is actually slower (512 MHz) as compared to the Bold we really didn’t see too much of a difference. Overall the UI responded very well. Multitasking was not an issue either. There’s really nothing more that we can say about the UI.
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Tags: BlackBerry , QWERTY , 3 megapixel

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