BlackBerry Curve 9360

BLACKBERRY CURVE 9360 REVIEW

A gorgeously thin BlackBerry, with a very high quality feel, and the benefit of a full QWERTY keyboard and optical trackpad. The 9360 comes with BlackBerry 7, which integrates facebook and twitter into the communications hub of the phone. Still, picking up the 9360, first impressions are excellent. The phone is the exact same height and width as the 9300, but 3mm have been shaved off the thickness, making the device much sleeker to hold, and it looks much more purposeful too. At 99g it feels astonishingly light to hold, though never flimsy. In fact, it's as solid and well-built as any BlackBerry. The fabulous keyboard has been retained, of course. The 2.44 inch display is the same size as the old Curve, but the number of pixels has more than doubled. It's still a small screen though, and this limits any chance the Curve has of being mistaken for a media phone. It's well and truly a business phone, but that's OK with us. The operating system has been upgraded to BlackBerry 7, which should be a seamless transition for old Curve users. The new operating system has several refinements, including much better integration of social networking including facebook and twitter. This certainly helps to boost the usefulness of the Curve as an all-round communications and messaging machine. The upgraded 800MHz processor gives the phone a certain amount of oomph! Coupled with 512MB of RAM, the user interface shows virtually no lag, and even apps such as web browsing and BlackBerry Maps show no sign of slowing down. The latest BlackBerry 7 operating system tweaks the look of the interface, allowing you to scroll across different screens for lists of apps arranged in categories: All, Frequent, Downloads, Media and Favourites. It includes Near Field Communication NFC so it's ready for mobile-based payment schemes when they become available (almost none exist in the UK currently). The latest BlackBerry Messenger 6 is also here, and now adds the ability to trade free instant chats with your mates from within some apps and games. But while this and other recent BlackBerrys have many good qualities, the lack of additional apps in BlackBerry App World is beginning to look more like a problem. Lots of the basics are covered, with some okay games, some good business apps and some fun stuff too, but the choice now looks embarrassingly far behind what's available for Google and Apple's platforms. Internally, the 800MHz processor backed by 512MB of RAM may not be the fastest on paper, but it feels very nippy in practise, due in part to the streamlined OS, which isn't held back by fancy animated graphics or active widgets. Overall, it's a decent performer. The 5-megapixel camera includes a single LED flash, as well as image stabilisation and face detection. It can deliver some sharp and detailed pics in good light, but noise creeps in quickly in less than ideal light conditions and there's no autofocus. Video recording drops the quality to VGA level (640x480 pixels), with no HD option. Connectivity is good, with quadband GSM and 3G available for roaming, plus the option of Wi-Fi for faster data access. There's even support for Near Field Communication (NFC) if you can find a use for it. But what idiot had the bright idea of equipping the 9360 with such an underpowered battery? It's just 1000mAh, which is smaller than the Curve 9300 and really isn't enough for a serious phone. It's part of the compromise needed to make the 9360 so thin, but we can't help feeling it's a mistake. Battery-wise, the 1,000mAh model held up very well indeed, delivering a solid day and a half of heavy use. As RIM's new baseline standard, entry-level phone, the Curve 9360 offers a fair bit, and has enough slimness to keep the style-oriented interested. Unfortunately, a lot of the issues that plague RIM's top-of-the-line OS 7 handsets, like an uncertain future for apps, dated user interface, and sub-par battery performance are all recreated in the Curve 9360.

SPECIFICATION & FEATURES

BLACKBERRY CURVE 9360 PRICE

Price in USA $207

Price in UK £130

Price in EURO €153

Price in PAK Rs.23,000

Price in INDIA Rs.12,000