BlackBerry Curve 8330 from RIM

The BlackBerry from Research In Motion(RIM) often projects a feel of business and corporate life. Interestingly, this time around there's much more its got to offer. Enter the BlackBerry Curve 8330. A sleek, silverish smartphone, with a touch of chrome, this device packs in robust multimedia capabilities, a GPS, and a sharp two-megapixel camera.

It features a built in media player, the Desktop Media Manager, which allows you to listen to your favourite MP3, WMA, and MIDI music files, among others, and also MPEG4 and WMV video clips. The audio output is appreciable, and allows you to connect to wireless headsets, Bluetooth headsets, and handsfree kits. Voice features include a speaker phone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling and speed dial. The Curve is a quad band world phone and features advanced audio technology that has the ability to cancel out background noise and echoes, and can stunningly adjust its volume based on the environment you are in.

The 2 mega pixel camera housed at the back of the smart phone enables you to capture highly detailed photographs and incorporates a 5X zoom with a built in flash. Three picture sizes and three quality options are available, but a disappointing aspect is the abscence of video recording capabilities.

RIM has managed to incorporate a full-sized backlit keyboard, making the Curve noticably wider, at the same time, simplifying the usage of the BlackBerry's killer app: email ! Like other BlackBerry models, the Curve 8330 is compatible with the BlackBerry Enterprise server with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise to deliver corporate e-mail in real time. In all, the device can support 10 accounts, including POP3, IMAP4 e-mail accounts, and an e-mail wizard guides you through the set up process. It also has a spell check which will aid you with spellings in your messages before you send that important document across to your management. Attachments in many popular file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc, can be opened and viewed. Similar formats can also be attached with outgoing e-mail messages from the phone.

Topping it all is the GPS feature that enables you to use the Curve as a handheld navigation device, to which a location based service, or navigation software such as Google Maps for Mobile, can be added. This app can track your present location and provide you with directions to the destination of your choice, on sharp and colourful maps. Aiding this, is a text-to-speech functionality that verbally voices street names permitting you to concentrate on the drive, than following the path on the phone's screen.

The BlackBerry Curve is rated for 4 hours of talk time and around 17 days of standby time. Pretty robust a phone, and worth its price range of $199.99-$579.99.