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Review: BlackBerry Curve 8310

September 27, 2008 by admin

By Aaron Passmore.


The Blackberry Curve 8310 is the first of the popular smartphones to have a built-in GPS, and it makes it even more addictive. The 8310 arrived at my office in the hands of Sam Luscombe from Mobile Mentor (www.mobile-mentor.com).

Vodafone have a partnership with Mobile Mentor and will provide a free 1 hr training session with you when you purchase a BlackBerry device on a high end business contract, it will cost you $120 per hour for this service if the device is not on a business plan.

Mobile Mentor
Sam helped me configure the phone’s Data Suite on my computer and set up synchronisation between my outlook account (contacts, calendar, tasks etc).

Then we paired my Webmail account (Gmail) to the device. He then walked me through using the phone’s operating system and demonstrated the main features of the device such as using the email functionality, text messaging and web browser.

This was a very useful service provided by Mobile Mentor and relieved a lot of the headaches associated with learning how to use a new smartphone.

Features
As you’d expect from a BlackBerry device, the device’s email functionality is truly excellent.

You get push email out of the box and the 8310 is compatible with all versions of BlackBerry Enterprise Server as well as many POP3, IMAP and Webmail accounts.

Receiving email was also very fast, I had a colleague email me a 2MB PDF and it arrived in a matter of minutes. The 8310 also supports Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel and PowerPoint).

The 8310 also has a 35-key, QWERTY keyboard which is great when composing email and text messages.

The keyboard is subtly backlit, so replying to those late night work queries from the comfort of your bed is easy. The trackball navigator is also very easy to use.

Although they are similar in design, the feature that sets the BlackBerry Curve 8310 apart from it’s predecessor (the 8300) is the introduction of GPS.

While the BlackBerry’s built-in maps don’t yet include New Zealand, you can download the Google Maps application from the browser and the GPS works a treat.

The GPS picks up your location very quickly when outside a building and also in your car and will display your location to within a 10m radius when stationary and 20m when driving in crystal clear colour on a 320 by 240 pixel QXGA screen.

The display also has a light-sensing feature that automatically adjusts the brightness depending on whether you’re indoors or outdoors.

The 8310 also comes with a next-generation media player which supports MP3, AAC, Midi, Windows Media Audio, Mpeg4, Windows Media Video and H.263 video playback and has a handy 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can upgrade to better headphones from the standard ear buds that come with the 8310.

The 8310 has 64Mb flash memory plus a microSD expandable memory slot. However it would have been nice to have the microSD memory slot accessible without having to remove the back cover and battery.

There is also a built-in 2MP camera with 5x digital zoom and flash that takes a pretty good picture.

One of the drawbacks when purchasing a smartphone is that quite often, the phone side of the device is not all that flash.

This is not the case with the BlackBerry Curve 8310. Calls were crystal clear and background noise was negligible.

The Verdict
Overall I was incredibly impressed with the BlackBerry Curve 8310 and will be sad to have to return this device, although my wife probably won’t be.

Aptly nicknamed the CrackBerry, this device is addictive and I found myself wasting hours on end either browsing the net or replying to work emails after hours.

For those of you lucky enough to own this device, get into the habit of turning it off when you’re with your loved ones!

$999 from Vodafone shops.

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( via stuff.co.nz )

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This entry was posted on September 27, 2008 at September 27, 2008 and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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