RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 review

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is RIM’s attempt to produce a low-cost BlackBerry and hopefully attract a new kind of user – businesses on a tighter budget, consumers who are yet to take the smartphone plunge. The question, as always when a premium supplier attempts to slash costs to attract new buyers, is does it make the cutbacks in the right areas? And is the price still too high?

Looks and feel

Some, a little uncharitably, have described the BlackBerry Curve 8520 as the “cheap and nasty” little brother to the Curve 8900. And this is understandable, as we cover in the Cut-down specs section further down the page.

It certainly feels plasticky, and doesn’t have the ruggedness of Nokia’s similarly priced E71. However, one nice innovation is the small trackpad-style button you use for navigation. This replaces the clickable wheel in phones like the Pearl, and due to the lack of moving parts RIM claims it’s inherently sturdier.

Time will tell, but once you get used to its miniscule size the trackpad does make it easy to navigate around the screen. Considering this device’s price, we’re surprised by the quality of the screen: it’s bright, sharp, and there’s none of the graininess that can plague low-cost panels. On its own, it also looks quite vibrant. Place the 8520 next to a BlackBerry Bold and it’s clearly a lower grade panel, but few will complain and both photos and movie trailers look fine.

The lower-resolution screen – 320 x 240 – is more of a limitation when it comes to web browsing, but thanks to RIM’s highly capable web browser it’s quite simple to zoom in and out. The problem comes when you want to read a longer story and need to keep on pressing down to get to the next chunk.

Cut-down specs?

Some will instantly dismiss the Curve 8520 for internet browsing due to its lack of 3G – instead, this phone relies on venerable technologies such as GPRS and EDGE (plus, naturally, quad-band GSM). However, due to the way RIM handles internet browsing – essentially using clever compression technology to reduce data demands – this didn’t prove a hurdle in real-world use.

Even complex pages like www.pcpro.co.uk load up in a few seconds. We also downloaded a 220KB program from BlackBerry App World in around 15 seconds; hardly an awful wait. The bigger problem comes if you’re having a conference call and want to check your email as you simply won’t be able to.

RIM has also sacrificed GPS in its mission to reduce the price, but we’re pleased to see Wi-Fi is included as part of the package. Our only caveat is that this will quickly destroy your battery life if you accidentally leave it on. To keep the Curve 8520 slim, RIM opts for a small battery, so our hopes for the Curve in our battery life benchmarks weren’t high.

However, due to the low power demands of BlackBerry OS 4.6 and the GPRS radio, it kept going for seven days – despite the fact it was polling for email every half hour. In everyday use, we’re confident it can keep going for three or four days without a struggle.

Music and video

However, battery life will plummet if you decide to use the Curve as your MP3 player, and perhaps surprisingly there’s every chance you will. For sitting atop the 8520 you’ll find three buttons: two for skipping to the next or previous track, the middle one to play or pause music. The play/pause button triples up as a mute for stopping the phone ringing if you get a call you want to ignore. It’s all very convenient; with the Curve sitting in your pocket that’s precisely where you’d want the controls to be.

There’s also a full-size 3.5mm jack for plugging in headphones of your choosing; RIM bundles a basic set. The music player itself will never win rave reviews – we’re not sure we’d want to navigate a huge library of tracks through its simple interface – and also note there’s limited storage on the 8520’s built-in flash memory: just 256MB. However, a micro-SD card offers room for expansion.

We should also give brief mention to the 2-megapixel camera, which takes 1,600 x 1,200 pictures. It’s nothing special, as you’ll see if you flick to the sample photo in the gallery above (click Full Size to launch the gallery), but it’s fine for snaps in decent light.

Traditional strengths

The full-size Qwerty keyboard and superb email features of BlackBerrys have become almost so predictable as to barely be worth mentioning, but if this is your first email phone you’d be suitably pleased. The keyboard, while plasticky, is designed with quick typing in mind, which is why there’s a decent amount of space around the buttons (this helps stop annoying accidental clicks).

The BlackBerry Internet Service is also present and correct, allowing you to set up ten email addresses on the device and flip between them with ease. If you’ve never experienced the addictive pleasure of “push” email, you’ll be impressed. We were less impressed by BlackBerry’s Twitter client, Twitterberry, which makes it far too difficult to see what other people are tweeting about.

Fortunately that’s where the hordes of BlackBerry extras come in. For example, one PC Pro reader recommended Yatca, and more are available through BlackBerry App World.

User interface

Bearing in mind that this phone is aimed at first-time buyers, it’s worth looking at the BlackBerry interface anew. This phone is running BlackBerry OS 4.6, which builds upon the same BlackBerry principles of old: you scroll through a flat list of applications, folders and settings to find what you’re looking for.

Say, for example, you want to set an alarm. You press the physical BlackBerry button that launches the Home screen (essentially a list of icons). You scroll down to Clock, press the touchpad button, and that launches the application. You then press the BlackBerry button again, choose Set Alarm via the touchpad button, and then enter the time you wish to be woken.

It feels clumsy compared with a touchscreen phone, but once you get used to the icons RIM uses – and this can take a while – you should find it easy to navigate around. For example, one oddity is that it hides away programs you’ve downloaded into the Downloads folder by default, but it’s possible to move them into the Home screen if you so wish.

Conclusion

It would be too easy to dismiss the BlackBerry Curve 8520 as cheap and nasty. Certainly it doesn’t feel as well-built as a top-end BlackBerry, but it should survive the duration of an 18-month contract without falling apart. In fact, we think the touchpad will mean on average it lasts longer than phones that rely on a trackwheel.

However, it’s impossible to ignore the omissions of GPS and 3G. The lack of GPS makes using map-based applications much more fiddly, and we can guarantee that at some point you’ll want to know precisely where you are – but can’t find out.

The biggest problem for BlackBerry is that the competition is so fierce, and we fear that it’s set the price of the 8520 too high. On a pay-as-you-go contract, you can buy the Curve 8520 for £200 inc VAT from The Carphone Warehouse. Which is fine, except you can buy the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 for £250 inc VAT direct from Orange – and the 8900 is a more stylish phone with a higher resolution screen.

Even worse for RIM, the Nokia E63 typically costs £150 inc VAT on a pay-as-you-go deal, and 3 is offering it for free on an 18-month, £15-per-month contract. Shop around, and you’ll also be able to find the Nokia E71 on £20-per-month deals.

And how much does the BlackBerry Curve 8520 cost on contract? Amazingly, £35 per month – although it’s actually £25 per month once you take into account that £10 is “automatically” cut from the price.

That’s no bargain. Until this price drops in price to match the Nokia E63, both in pay-as-you-go and contract form, we can’t recommend it.

Details
Cheapest price on contract	£0
Contract monthly charge	£25.00
Contract period	18 months
Contract provider	Orange
Battery Life
Talk time, quoted	5hrs
Standby, quoted	17 days
Physical
Dimensions	60 x 13.9 x 109mm (WDH)
Weight	106g
Touchscreen	no
Primary keyboard	Physical
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	0MB
ROM size	256MB
Camera megapixel rating	2.0mp
Front-facing camera?	no
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	2.5in
Resolution	320 x 240
Landscape mode?	yes
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	no
Software
OS family	BlackBerry OS