Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Fantastic set of features, stylish, supports GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 and EV DO, light sensing technology.

Thumbs down: No wi-fi, call quality aint that great, micro SD located behind the battery.

Inside the Trunk:

• Data services SMS , E-Mail , Voice mail
• Modem Integrated Wireless cellular modem
• Cellular enhancement protocol GPS
• Cellular technology CDMA2000 1X
• Service Provider Sprint Nextel
• Band / mode CDMA2000 1X 1900/800
• Phone style Candy bar

THE WHIZ KID SPEAKS: After the long wait, the blackberry curve 8330 has finally been launched for all the Sprint users. This one just like its GSM counterpart is almost the same as far as the designing is concerned and has 3G capabilities to add to it. It has most of the features that have been already been applauded in the GSM counterpart. However this one lacks Wi-Fi. Anyways let’s move ahead with the review to get a more clear view of what this one has to offer.

Razzle- dazzle: This one has got the same ultra stylish looks like its GSM counterpart. At 4.2 ounces and measuring 4.2 inches high by 2.4 inches wide by 0.6 inch deep this one is not that behemothic and also easily slips into the pocket. This one is available in titanium and the QWERTY keyboard has black keys and black trim instead of silver.

Coming to the display of this one…it features a 2.5-inch nontouch screen with a 65,536 color output and a 320×240 pixel resolution. What I found impressive about the display is the light-sensing technology using which the display adjusts its brightness and color in accordance with the surrounding light. The colors do fade out a bit under direct sunlight but still operating it is a pleasant experience.

Below the display is the talk and the end button along with the navigation toggle along with a menu button and a back button. The keys on the QWERTY keyboard have been spaced quite aptly making it quite easy to text without many mispresses.

The left side houses a 3.5 headphone jack, USB port and a customizable convenience key and on the right spine there the volume rocker and user programmable shortcut key. At the back of the phone we have the camera lens and a self portrait mirror along with the flash. What I didn’t like about the design is that the Micro SD slot is situated behind the battery which makes accessing it quite a tedious effort.

Inside Dope: This one for sure has got a lot of goodies along with it. For the starters, this one comes loaded with GPS to support Sprint navigation. Since Sprint navigation is an add on service, the user could always use Google maps and other Google services in case he does not want too spend on the add on feature. The missing feature in this one as I mentioned earlier is the Wi-Fi, however this is EV-DO capable. It offers data speeds of around 300Kbps -600 Kbps and can also blow up to 2.4 Mbps. This speed should be more than enough for a decent net surfing experience. The Curve offers a lot of Multimedia features in collaboration with Sprint like the Sprint TV and the Sprint Video and the Sprint music store. Also the inbuilt media player supports various formats like the MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV, and H.263 video clips. This one has an inbuilt memory of 64 Mb which can be extended upto 8Gb. The sound quality through the speakers was not that great and the bass used to get blown up at times, however most of us use headphones to listen to music so I don’t assume the speakers should be a problem.

This one comes loaded with a 2-megapixel camera which has video recording capabilities. It offers 5x optical zoom for clicking of pictures and flash features with 3 picture sizes and 3 quality options. However the photo quality failed to impress me much. The photos exhibited a lot of grayish shades which for sure didn’t make the photo quality any pleasant.

Apart from these it offers features like speakerphone, voice dialing and commands, conference calling, text and multimedia messaging, and call audio enhancement, with the help of which the bass and treble of the audio can be adjusted. For the once who prefer emails this one supports the Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise and can be easily synced with the BlackBerry Enterprise server.

Coming to the call quality… I wont say that it is the best or anything even close by, it’s just plain mediocre. The voices were loud and clear though at times the voices got a bit mixed up. There was no static or interference but on the callers end they were not satisfied with complaints of surrounding echoes. I would recommend using a pair of headphones for talking.

This one has a 1,150mAh lithium-ion battery which has like a talktime of around 15 hours and a standby time of 11 hours which is pretty much decent enough.

Nitty- gritty: This one could have been definitely better and with a few improvements here and there along with its impressive set of features it surely would have been the show stealer. Its still a good buy nonetheless. So for those of you who want a decent non touchscreen smartphone, go ahead give it a try.

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