BlackBerry Curve

Ask someone who works for a large company about gadgets that can access the web on the go, and they’ll probably start rattling on about BlackBerrys. Early versions of this device took corporate email by storm, delivering messages to office workers even when they were away from their desks. Now, Research In Motion (the company behind the BlackBerry) wants to manoeuvre its way into the lives of those of us who don’t have corporate sponsors to supply our phones, and it aims to achieve this by coming up with devices aimed at regular mobile phone users. This BlackBerry Curve is the latest smartphone looking to find a place in our pockets.

Features
The Curve certainly isn’t short on features – as you’d expect, the core components of phone, email and web browsing are all well covered. Like most new mobile phones it has a built-in camera but it also plays media files including video and music. There’s even some handy mapping software that comes as standard and offers zoomable international road information in key places like the US and Europe.

Performance
Our test unit was connected to the O2 network and its core functions of emailing and phoning worked very well. However, despite the Curve’s large screen we were underwhelmed by the web-browsing experience, which defaulted to showing sites stripped of presentation detail. While this meant complex sites were easier to read, even simple web pages were rendered in only minimal detail, leaving us craving access to the very standard computer-based browser sooner rather than later.

The camera was disappointingly average – you need to force the flash to go on in low light and even then it’s no replacement for a proper camera, though it can more or less cope with bright outdoor conditions. We were impressed with the maps though, which offer a good level of detail across most places that you might end up lost in.

Ease of use
Because BlackBerrys are a little bit different from the norm, there’s an ease-of-use barrier with the interface that we continue to take issue with. It boils down to the menu system: BlackBerrys reduce on-screen clutter by relying heavily on a single menu, which you have to scroll around to make choices. The positive side of this is that it’s powerful, because it gives instant access to even the most sophisticated of functions. The downside is that operation of everyday tasks requires sifting through menus, making it unwieldy.

The rollerball is a nifty alternative to dials and joysticks, but we didn’t like using it on the web as by default it skipped chunks of text to highlight the next link, rather than letting you browse pages naturally. You can change this in the options but it means another visit to a menu, as does performing the most common of browsing tasks like tapping in a new web address.

Value for money
As with most mobile phones, the price you pay is dependent on the kind of contract you’re willing to take out with your operator – O2 and Vodafone were the two options at the time of writing.
However, this device is at the premium end of the market so, if you’re happy to commit to a weighty contract with a significant monthly bill, you should be able to pick up the device for very little. For more modest monthly payments, you can expect to pay a lot for the phone up front.