BlackBerry Curve 8520 pros:
+ 256MB Flash Memory
+ 512MHz processor with 128MB RAM
+ Excellent keyboard
+ Good size and feel
+ Optical trackpad is good once you get used to it

BlackBerry Curve 8520 cons:
- In-call sound quality disappoints
- Plastic parts seem not durable enough
- no GPS

Design:

The new BlackBerry Curve 8520 measures 109mm x 60 mm x 13.90 mm (4.29 x 2.36 x 0.54 inches) and weighs 106 grams with battery. The front of the BlackBerry phone is dominated by the 3.4-inch display and the very comfy keyboard. While at the first glance the phone does not look much different from any other BlackBerry phone you can see that it features an optical trackball which is also quite comfortable when you get used to it. The keyboard layout is as usual, but what can you expect from a full QWERTY phone. The top of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 houses media control buttons along with the standard 3.5 mm audio jack and microUSB charging/data port. Both sides of the BlackBerry phone have convenience keys, but the right side houses also the volume rocker. The back of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 features only the 2 megapixel camera lens without flash.

Performance:

The screen displays 320 x 240 pixels and is bright, vivid and has good direct sunlight legibility. The battery performance is, as usual in BlackBerry, also above average in this class of cell phones.
The phonebook has practically unlimited capabilities and so you can store hundreds of contacts with multiple fields for custom ringtone, photo, address, email and plenty of other information.
As most modern phones the BlackBerry Curve 8520 comes with a very good organizer in which you can find several very useful applications such as calendar, memo and tasks apps, calculator and voice note recorder.

Multimedia:

The 2 megapixel built in camera in BlackBerry Curve 8520 preforms quite well producing good quality photos with sharp images and nice color. However, due to a relatively small image size the photos cannot be used for anything other than emails, or business meetings.
The music player in BlackBerry Curve 8520 supports a bunch of file types and has good sound quality. The included headphones are of rather poor quality, yet as the BlackBerry Curve 8520 features the standard 3.5 mm audio jack you can use a much better headphone set. As usual, you can sort your music library by artist, genre, album and so on. The album art is, of course, displayed.

Menus / ease of use:

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 runs the latest version of BlackBerry proprietary software and so the user interface has modern icons and very good look overall. The menu structure is quite straightforward so new users should have no difficulties using it. Thanks to the fast procession and a lot of memory everything works very smoothly. Moreover, the OS is highly customizable and you can find plenty of additional programs on the Internet.

• Memory

256MB Flash Memory

• Expandable Memory

Hot swappable Micro SD (located behind battery-cover). SDHC
supported

• Display

High resolution 320×240 pixel color display
Transmissive TFT LCD
Supports over 65,536 colours
2.46″ (diagonally measured)

• Camera

2 MP camera with Fixed focus, no Flash, 5x digital zoom

• Video Camera Format

Normal Mode: 320 x 240 pixel; MMS Mode: 176 x 144 pixel

• Keyboard

35 key backlit QWERTY keyboard

• Ringtones

32 Polyphonic – MIDI, MP3, SP-MIDI, WAV

• Wi-Fi

802.11b/g enabled

• Bluetooth

Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR

• Media Player

BlackBerry Media Player

• Ports

Micro USB port allows charging and data synchronization of the device with a USB “A” to micro-USB “B” cable

• Network

Quad-Band: 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900MHz GSM/GPRS networks
Quad-Band: 850/ 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz EDGE networks

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Overview:
BlackBerry Bold 9000 is a full QWERTY cell phone with comfortable keyboards, high resolution, large screen, built in digital camera and document viewer and editor. Additionally, the latest BlackBerry has a standard 3.5 mm audio jack and very good audio quality and excellent connectivity.

BlackBerry Bold 9000 pros:
+ 2.6″ 65K-color TFT landscape display with a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels
+ BlackBerry OS v4.6
+ 624 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM
+ Comfortable four-row full QWERTY keyboard
+ Quad-band GSM support and tri-band 3G with HSDPA
+ Very good build quality
+ Wi-Fi and built-in GPS and BlackBerry maps preloaded
+ 2 megapixel camera, LED flash
+ Responsive trackball navigation
+ Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 8GB)
+ DivX and XviD video support
+ Good web browser

BlackBerry Bold 9000 cons:
- Poor camera performance
- No email support without BlackBerry Internet Service account
- Lack of radio
- Won’t handle 16 GB memory cards

The design:
BlackBerry Bold 9000 measures 114 x 66 x 14 mm and weighs 133 grams. The phone is made of hogh quality and durable materials which make good impression. Additionally, the phone comes with a leather carrying pouch in the box. The front of the phone is dominated by the full QWERTY keyboard and the 2.6” landscape display. On the left side of BlackBerry Bold 9000 there is one of the loudspeaker grills, the 3.5mm audio jack and the miniUSB port. Also on the left if the convenience key (highly customizable) and the microSD card slot. He right side of the BlackBerry Bold 9000 houses the second loudspeaker grill, volume rocker and second convenience key. On the top of the cell phone you will find the Mute key, whereas at the bottom the microphone, the lanyard eyelet and back cover release button. The back of BlackBerry Bold 9000 is covered with faux leather and features the 3 megapixel camera lens and LED flash.

Performance:
The 2.6 TFT display works in 320 x 480 resolution and shows great colors. Moreover, it has very good direct sunlight legibility. The QWERTY keyboard is very responsive and comfortable to use. The phone runs on BlackBerry OS v4.6 which looks really good. As most BlackBerry cell phones the BlackBerry Bold 9000 comes with a document viewer and editor, yet, unfortunately with no PDF support. The phonebook is practically unlimited and with multiple fields for information.
The biggest disappointment in BlackBerry Bold 9000 is its 2 megapixel camera. In times when cell phones tend to offer 5 or 8 megapixel BlackBerry Bold 9000’s 2 megapixel seem poor. Moreover, the image quality is, in the best case, average. Even the manual settings of the camera do not help too much. Thus, as you might expect the video recording is even worse and it is only suitable for recording MMSs.
The BlackBerry Bold 9000 also comes with a bunch of timesaving applications such as calendar, calculator, alarms, To-do, timer and stopwatch. They offer the usual bunch of features well known to anyone who has ever used a cell phone. Yet, the BlackBerry Bold 9000 also comes with 5 quite playable games.

Multimedia:
The music player in BlackBerry Bold 9000 is truly amazing. Although it might not be the most impressing from Th. Point of view of graphics, but as it sorts the music library automatically, allows you to browse it in a few different ways and has superb audio quality I think that that’s what counts. The noise levels are very good and the stereo crosstalk and dynamic ranged are even better. Of course, the player may be minimized and work in the background.
The video player in the BlackBerry Bold 9000 supports DivX and XviD videos out of the box. Unfortunately not all of videos will work, but ‚only’ the vast majority. With the high resolution, large screen the movies look really good.
The web browsing experience is also very good thanks to the display. The websites are rendered just like on a computer, they are readable and as you can zoom in and out, pan and scroll there is really not much more you could expect.

Menus / ease of use:
The BlackBerry Bold 9000 runs on BlackBerry OS v4.6 which is pleasant to work with and quite straightforward. However, due to its numerous business oriented features new blackberry users might get lost in the abundance of settings at first. However, after just a few hours, or days of using the phone everything seems natural and easy. All in all, is taking pictures with a mobile phone is not your priority wheres business-related phone features are the BlackBerry Bold 9000 might be just the right phone for you.
Selected BlackBerry Bold 9000 features and specifications:
Price: US$ 377 /unit

Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 / UMTS 1900 / 2100
Form Factor: PDA
Antenna: Internal
Navigation: Trackball / QWERTY Keypad
Battery Type: 1500 mAh Li-Ion
Talk Time: 5.00
Standby Time: 312
Memory: 1.0 GB
Expandable Memory: microSD / TransFlash

Imaging
Main Screen: 65000 colors (TFT)
480 x 320 px
External Screen: N/A
Camera: 2.0 MP / Flash / 5X Zoom / Video Recorder

Audio
MP3 Player: MP3 / AAC / AAC+ / eAAC+ / BlackBerry Media Sync
FM Radio: N/A
Speakerphone
Push-To-Talk: N/A

Multimedia
Wallpapers: 480 x 320 px
Screen Savers: 480 x 320 px
Ring Tones: MP3
Themes: N/A
Games: J2ME
Streaming Multimedia: MPEG-4 / H.263

Messaging
SMS, EMS, MMS
Email: POP3 / IMAP4 / SMTP / Microsoft Exchange / Lotus Domino
Chat: AOL / ICQ / Windows Live / Yahoo!
Predictive Text: SureType

Applications
Calendar
To-Do List
WAP: 2.0 (BlackBerry Browser)

Connectivity
Bluetooth: 2.0 (A2DP / AVRC / HFP / HSP / OPP / SPP)
Infrared Port: N/A
High-Speed Data: HSDPA
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g
GPS: BlackBerry Maps
PC Sync: USB 2.0

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