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BlackBerry’s latest offering in the 8520 Curve is going to give all the other business handsets a serious run for their money, including the other BlackBerrys. It may lack 3G but fares quite well without.
Form Factor Keeping in tune with ALL the new BlackBerrys that made it out recently, except of course the Storm, the 8520 is a neat little handset. It’s smaller than the others and, kinda cute in a way. What pains me is that the 2.6-inch display has a resolution of 320 x 240, which is quite mundane. Then again what can you expect considering it's one of the cheaper models, but having reviewed the higher-end models that just happen to look quite like this one, the display sort of stands out like a pimple on the tip of a nose. You’ll get used to it especially if you’re upgrading from any other handset with a resolution like that.

Instead of the ‘standard’ trackball or ‘Pearl’, RIM has decided to go with a Touch-sensitive optical trackpad. The sensitivity is just right and after just a little while navigation becomes extremely simple. The full QWERTY keypad may seem a little squashed but believe me it’s easy to use. What makes the handset even more appealing are the media keys on the top and the 3.5mm earphone socket on the side. Other keys on the sides include volume/zoom keys, a shortcut to the voice dialing feature and a micro USB slot for the charger and PC connectivity. The hot swap slot for the microSD card is under the rear panel.

I like the handset. It's light weight, simple to use and comes with a 2GB card as well as a rubber protective case.
Features and Performance Interface Running the typical BlackBerry OS, the handset has all the trimmings of any of the BlackBerry handsets, which is definitely a good thing. Shortcuts can be assigned to the desktop and the main menu systems and icons are easy enough to maneuver through. On the whole the system is smooth thanks to the 512MHz processor and as I mentioned using the trackpad works out really well.
Media As usual the BlackBerry music player worked without a hitch. Audio quality is great. The volume is loud enough to keep the outside world at bay and the bundled handsfree is comfortable enough to use so you won’t really need to invest in another, but you have the option and that’s great. It also has plenty of EQ presets to help enhance the audio.
The 8520 supports quite a few standard video formats so you can enjoy movies without having to worry about too much conversion. Of course the resolution isn’t as great as the 8900 or the Bold 9000 but it works. An FM radio would have been a great addition to the features set but you might not miss it, there’s plenty of other stuff.
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