Rim BlackBerry Curve 8520 Smartphone
- Screen Size (Diagonal): 2.64 inch
- Installed Memory: 256 MB
- Operating System: BlackBerry OS
- Connectivity: Bluetooth, WiFi
- Performance: Quad Band
- Design: Mobile
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BlackBerry Curve 8520 Smartphone is a great phone for Moms and Internet Junkies
Pros
Good call quality; Tons of apps to feed your social Internet addictions
Cons
Too many Internet outage problems recently; Browser gets kind of slow
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Even though the browser is kind of slow, the Blackberry Curve 8520 is a great phone for people who need their Internet, Email and Social Networking by their side.
When "Santa" offered me a smartphone last year, I got so excited. After three years of smartphones, the 18 months with just a regular cell phone left me feeling neglected when I was sitting through swim practice and school parking lots, not to mention the fact that I became heavily addicted to Facebook during that time. Then I learned that Santa's plan was to either get me the oldest/cheapest model of Blackberry at the T-Mobile store, or give me his old one, while he got the newest model. Luckily, we settled somewhere in the middle: I got a newer (not the newest) model than his, the RIM Blackberry Curve 8520 Smartphone.
Some physical basics about the phone
The Blackberry Curve 8520 looks pretty much like any other blackberry: about two and a half inches wide, four inches long, with a full QWERTY keyboard on the bottom half and a full color screen occupying the top half of the phone. Across the middle there are four flat (as in not raised) buttons with a touch pad in the center. From left to right, the buttons represent 'phone/talk', 'menu', 'last screen', and 'end phone/close out of current app'.
There is a camera lens in the upper back of the phone, as well as buttons on the sides to pull up the camera, volume up/down, and 'play', 'pause', 'forward' and 'back' buttons on the top of the phone for when you use the media function.
Features/Abilities of the Blackberry Curve 8520
I believe there are two main reasons "Santa" decided to return me to the world of the smartphone: he frequently wants me to be able to proofread his work emails for him before he sends them out (because English is not his native language) and he wanted to be able to just "invite" me to his appointments or have me do so to him, to make scheduling snafus less frequent in our family. On both these needs, the Curve 8520 works pretty well. Here are the features I most frequently use:
Email: I have both a hotmail and gmail account set up on this phone. All messages come through my general inbox (along with text messages), as well as the specific hotmail and gmail inboxes along the bottom of my screen. Whenever there is a new message to any of them, a little red star appears in their silhouette on the bottom of the screen. For the most part, these emails arrive instantly. The messages are easy to read, and never get cut off for being too long, as used to happen on my old Treo. The only problem I have is that the attachments won't always open for me if someone sends a .jpg or .pdf file. I'm pretty sure the Pdf issue stems from me not downloading some kind of Adobe app or reader, but I don't usually receive any super important Pdf's, so I just open them up when I'm on my home computer.
Sending messages is easy. You can have the phone populate words based on common words that start with the letters you are typing, which I find really annoying, or just do the old-fashioned thing and write out the words. I like that this phone automatically capitalizes the first word of the sentence, even on text messages.
Other than the minor issue (to me) of not being able to open certain attachments, my only problem with the email function with the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is that there were three outages over a two month period that rendered all Internet and messaging functions useless. The first two were a universal problem with Research In Motion (RIM, the maker of Blackberry), about a week apart. Then, earlier this year it appears that just the 8520 model had the Internet down one morning. My husband's 8320 worked fine, as did most Blackberrys nationwide, but I heard of at least two other 8520 users that day in other parts of the country who had their Internet down that morning. While I haven't had any outages for a couple months, this still leaves me a bit perturbed.
Camera: The camera on the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is two megapixels and takes okay pictures. You can zoom by scrolling up or down on the touch pad, but the image gets much blurrier when you zoom in on something. If the photo subject moves at all when you shoot the picture, it will be blurry, so I pretty much only use this camera when I don't have my regular camera handy or if I want to post something straight to the Internet, which brings me to...
Facebook: Yes, I am one of those people who has to update their status everyday and check what other people are staying when I'm stuck in line for coffee. I have several family members who live out of state and rely on occasional Facebook postings to see how big my kids are, so the ability to take a picture on my phone and instantly send the image to Facebook is wonderful. This allowed me to instantly show my husband a picture of his son blowing out his birthday candle while he was in South America.
The Facebook app for Blackberry shows me everything I want to see and I can easily change it to only show me status updates, news feed, links or photos.
Internet: After eighteen months without mobile Internet, it is very nice to be able to surf the net when I'm out and about. Using the touch pad is a hundred times better than the trackball on my husband's Blackberry, and makes me feel like I'm using my laptop at home. It's also a lot nicer/easier on the screen than using a stylus again.
The only problems I run into with the Internet are that my Epinions' ratings never stick and that the browser is pretty darn slow half the time. I would be tempted to consider this a problem with T-Mobile, but I've used my iPod Touch in various WiFi settings and the Safari browser is several times faster than my Blackberry in each location.
Calendar: So, this is the big reason my husband wanted me to get a Blackberry versus any other brand of phone. You can schedule appointments on the hour or half hour in less than a minute's time. You can view the calendar in daily, weekly or monthly mode, and set appointments to recur as needed up to a specific date if you would like. You can also color code various appointments (purple, blue, green), usually by assigning one of your email addresses or Facebook account to the appointment.
If my daughter has a school event or I need my husband to pick up the kids while I work, I just have to 'Invite' him to the event I have scheduled, and he will receive an email which he can accept or decline. He has become so dependent on his Blackberry calendar that this is the best way to get him on board with our plans.
Games: The Blackberry Curve 8520 comes with Sudoku, Brickbuster, Word Mole and Solitaire. It also comes with trial versions of some other games, including PacMan, but the trial lasts until you beat the first level, so I gave up on them. The non-trial games are fun, though, with full color images.
Twitter: I used to use UberTwitter to stay connected, until Blackberry did the beta testing for Twitter for Blackberry. This app is an excellent way to keep posted on your Twitterverse, with a visually appealing interface that is very easy to follow and makes tweeting, retweeting and replying to tweets a piece of cake.
Media Player: To be honest, I only used the media player on this phone for the three hour trial period with the Nutsie program it comes with. The sound was good, as was the ability to move forward, backward and pause songs from the top of the phone, but the program was slow so I didn't want to invest more time in it (and certainly not any money).
Call Quality
What's a cell phone review without discussing the phone part? I have been very impressed with the call quality I get with my Blackberry Curve 8520. There are a couple of specific patches of road in which I occasionally lose signal, but that is a T-Mobile problem, as I had similar problems with previous phones. Overall, though, the quality is clear and I am never asked to repeat what I said, nor do I have to ask the person I am speaking to for a repeat.
This phone comes with a wired headset (which sounds terrible and tinny) and an AC adapter. If you want a car charger, you need to buy it separate. My recommendation would be to not buy a separate car charger. Instead, get a Motorola Motopure Bluetooth set that comes with a car charger. I use the charger from my Motopure H12 to charge my Blackberry 8520 in the car and it works fine.
Battery Life on the Blackberry Curve 8520 really depends on how much you use the phone and how long you've had it. I've had mine for about eight months now, and I pretty much need to charge it every night. I probably go online (Web, Facebook, Twitter or Email) on the phone for a total of an hour a day and talk for two hours. When I get up in the morning, I'm down to two out of five bars of battery life if I didn't charge my phone the night before. I believe that just having the Bluetooth on while I'm driving sucks a lot of this battery time away, but I couldn't prove that in a court of science.
Recommendation
For people who want to stay connected to the Internet and social networking arenas when they are away from their desk, the Blackberry Curve 8520 will serve them well. Based on my iPod Touch experience, I actually think an iPhone would be better for Internet junkies, but if you don't want to use AT&T, a Curve 8520 is an excellent option.
Recommended Accessories:
Motorola Motopure H12
Blackberry Curve 8520 Embossed Silicone Skin Case
Some physical basics about the phone
The Blackberry Curve 8520 looks pretty much like any other blackberry: about two and a half inches wide, four inches long, with a full QWERTY keyboard on the bottom half and a full color screen occupying the top half of the phone. Across the middle there are four flat (as in not raised) buttons with a touch pad in the center. From left to right, the buttons represent 'phone/talk', 'menu', 'last screen', and 'end phone/close out of current app'.
There is a camera lens in the upper back of the phone, as well as buttons on the sides to pull up the camera, volume up/down, and 'play', 'pause', 'forward' and 'back' buttons on the top of the phone for when you use the media function.
Features/Abilities of the Blackberry Curve 8520
I believe there are two main reasons "Santa" decided to return me to the world of the smartphone: he frequently wants me to be able to proofread his work emails for him before he sends them out (because English is not his native language) and he wanted to be able to just "invite" me to his appointments or have me do so to him, to make scheduling snafus less frequent in our family. On both these needs, the Curve 8520 works pretty well. Here are the features I most frequently use:
Email: I have both a hotmail and gmail account set up on this phone. All messages come through my general inbox (along with text messages), as well as the specific hotmail and gmail inboxes along the bottom of my screen. Whenever there is a new message to any of them, a little red star appears in their silhouette on the bottom of the screen. For the most part, these emails arrive instantly. The messages are easy to read, and never get cut off for being too long, as used to happen on my old Treo. The only problem I have is that the attachments won't always open for me if someone sends a .jpg or .pdf file. I'm pretty sure the Pdf issue stems from me not downloading some kind of Adobe app or reader, but I don't usually receive any super important Pdf's, so I just open them up when I'm on my home computer.
Sending messages is easy. You can have the phone populate words based on common words that start with the letters you are typing, which I find really annoying, or just do the old-fashioned thing and write out the words. I like that this phone automatically capitalizes the first word of the sentence, even on text messages.
Other than the minor issue (to me) of not being able to open certain attachments, my only problem with the email function with the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is that there were three outages over a two month period that rendered all Internet and messaging functions useless. The first two were a universal problem with Research In Motion (RIM, the maker of Blackberry), about a week apart. Then, earlier this year it appears that just the 8520 model had the Internet down one morning. My husband's 8320 worked fine, as did most Blackberrys nationwide, but I heard of at least two other 8520 users that day in other parts of the country who had their Internet down that morning. While I haven't had any outages for a couple months, this still leaves me a bit perturbed.
Camera: The camera on the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is two megapixels and takes okay pictures. You can zoom by scrolling up or down on the touch pad, but the image gets much blurrier when you zoom in on something. If the photo subject moves at all when you shoot the picture, it will be blurry, so I pretty much only use this camera when I don't have my regular camera handy or if I want to post something straight to the Internet, which brings me to...
Facebook: Yes, I am one of those people who has to update their status everyday and check what other people are staying when I'm stuck in line for coffee. I have several family members who live out of state and rely on occasional Facebook postings to see how big my kids are, so the ability to take a picture on my phone and instantly send the image to Facebook is wonderful. This allowed me to instantly show my husband a picture of his son blowing out his birthday candle while he was in South America.
The Facebook app for Blackberry shows me everything I want to see and I can easily change it to only show me status updates, news feed, links or photos.
Internet: After eighteen months without mobile Internet, it is very nice to be able to surf the net when I'm out and about. Using the touch pad is a hundred times better than the trackball on my husband's Blackberry, and makes me feel like I'm using my laptop at home. It's also a lot nicer/easier on the screen than using a stylus again.
The only problems I run into with the Internet are that my Epinions' ratings never stick and that the browser is pretty darn slow half the time. I would be tempted to consider this a problem with T-Mobile, but I've used my iPod Touch in various WiFi settings and the Safari browser is several times faster than my Blackberry in each location.
Calendar: So, this is the big reason my husband wanted me to get a Blackberry versus any other brand of phone. You can schedule appointments on the hour or half hour in less than a minute's time. You can view the calendar in daily, weekly or monthly mode, and set appointments to recur as needed up to a specific date if you would like. You can also color code various appointments (purple, blue, green), usually by assigning one of your email addresses or Facebook account to the appointment.
If my daughter has a school event or I need my husband to pick up the kids while I work, I just have to 'Invite' him to the event I have scheduled, and he will receive an email which he can accept or decline. He has become so dependent on his Blackberry calendar that this is the best way to get him on board with our plans.
Games: The Blackberry Curve 8520 comes with Sudoku, Brickbuster, Word Mole and Solitaire. It also comes with trial versions of some other games, including PacMan, but the trial lasts until you beat the first level, so I gave up on them. The non-trial games are fun, though, with full color images.
Twitter: I used to use UberTwitter to stay connected, until Blackberry did the beta testing for Twitter for Blackberry. This app is an excellent way to keep posted on your Twitterverse, with a visually appealing interface that is very easy to follow and makes tweeting, retweeting and replying to tweets a piece of cake.
Media Player: To be honest, I only used the media player on this phone for the three hour trial period with the Nutsie program it comes with. The sound was good, as was the ability to move forward, backward and pause songs from the top of the phone, but the program was slow so I didn't want to invest more time in it (and certainly not any money).
Call Quality
What's a cell phone review without discussing the phone part? I have been very impressed with the call quality I get with my Blackberry Curve 8520. There are a couple of specific patches of road in which I occasionally lose signal, but that is a T-Mobile problem, as I had similar problems with previous phones. Overall, though, the quality is clear and I am never asked to repeat what I said, nor do I have to ask the person I am speaking to for a repeat.
This phone comes with a wired headset (which sounds terrible and tinny) and an AC adapter. If you want a car charger, you need to buy it separate. My recommendation would be to not buy a separate car charger. Instead, get a Motorola Motopure Bluetooth set that comes with a car charger. I use the charger from my Motopure H12 to charge my Blackberry 8520 in the car and it works fine.
Battery Life on the Blackberry Curve 8520 really depends on how much you use the phone and how long you've had it. I've had mine for about eight months now, and I pretty much need to charge it every night. I probably go online (Web, Facebook, Twitter or Email) on the phone for a total of an hour a day and talk for two hours. When I get up in the morning, I'm down to two out of five bars of battery life if I didn't charge my phone the night before. I believe that just having the Bluetooth on while I'm driving sucks a lot of this battery time away, but I couldn't prove that in a court of science.
Recommendation
For people who want to stay connected to the Internet and social networking arenas when they are away from their desk, the Blackberry Curve 8520 will serve them well. Based on my iPod Touch experience, I actually think an iPhone would be better for Internet junkies, but if you don't want to use AT&T, a Curve 8520 is an excellent option.
Recommended Accessories:
Motorola Motopure H12
Blackberry Curve 8520 Embossed Silicone Skin Case
