computer and communication: RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 (T-Mobile)

After its last release, the buggy BlackBerry Storm 9530, RIM's got its groove back. The new BlackBerry Curve 8900 juices up the already-excellent Curve form factor with a sharper screen, faster processor, and better camera, letting it jump through new multimedia hoops while still helping you get your work done. If you need to stay connected, this Curve is the simplest and most stylish way to do it on T-Mobile.

The Curve 8900 looks like a cross between the BlackBerry Curve 8320 and the BlackBerry Bold 9000. Like the Bold, it's mostly black and has an insanely high-res screen: 360 by 480 pixels on a 2.4-inch panel, which basically makes the pixels invisible. The screen is even higher-res than the iPhone's 320-by-480 touch screen. Since the iPhone's screen is much larger, though, it can fit more information than the 8900. Like the original Curve, the 8900 features a full QWERTY keyboard of slightly separated keys that are a breeze to use. The handset features Mute and Lock buttons on its top, Voice Dialing, Camera, and Volume controls on the side, and its 3.2-megapixel camera on the back.


Despite its just-average signal strength, the 8900 is an excellent voice phone, with calls sounding especially loud and clear on T-Mobile's 2G EDGE network You can even fiddle with the bass and treble controls to find the most appealing sound. Call delivery sounds terrific on the other end; in my test calls, no background noise made it through—even on the speakerphone. The phone paired with two different Bluetooth headsets without a hitch (the mono Motorola H15 and the stereo Altec Lansing Backbeat); it also works with wired headsets. Voice dialing works well. The 8900 clocked almost 9 hours of talk time—not the best we've seen on T-Mobile, but still quite good. Ringtones are loud enough, but the vibrating alert is a bit too subtle.

A major benefit: The phone works with T-Mobile's $10-per-month unlimited Wi-Fi calling plan, which lets you make calls from any Wi-Fi network you can connect to. The 8900 connected easily to wireless networks via Linksys and Apple routers. Calls were smooth, and the phone switched back and forth between the Wi-Fi and EDGE networks without a hitch.

Like most BlackBerrys, the 8900 excels at messaging. It uses BlackBerry e-mail, which can support eight accounts of almost any variety and display them with attachments, formatting, and graphics intact. You can view photos, videos and, Microsoft Office attachments with its built-in viewers. You also get clients for AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Microsoft Live Messenger, and Yahoo. The 8900 delivers e-mail, text, and picture messages all into one inbox. I was also able to quickly load and use Twibble, a third-party Twitter client. Several other third-party BlackBerry apps I tried also worked fine.

The beefy 512-MHz processor lets the phone multitask comfortably and perform some heavy lifting in the audio and video departments. The music player handles MP3, AAC, and WMA files, and the phone comes with an app to sync your playlists with iTunes (non-DRM files only). Music sounded great on both wired and Bluetooth headphones. MPEG-4 video files look gorgeous in 480-by-360-pixel, 30-frame-per-second quality, but Roxio Media Manager, which comes with the BlackBerry, is slow and crashes occasionally. I had an easier time reformatting videos with a free program called Avidemux, and there are other free options available on the Web.

Since the 8900 doesn't hit T-Mobile's 3G network, you can't really stream video successfully without Wi-Fi coverage. But within Wi-Fi range, streaming worked well: SlingPlayer ran especially smoothly while playing video in full-screen mode; FlyCast streaming music played without interruption. The phone also incorporates GPS, which works with the built-in BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps. The GPS doesn't appear to be enhanced with cell-tower triangulation—at least in BlackBerry Maps—so it works best in open areas.

The 3.2-megapixel camera takes admirably sharp photos, even in low light. But you'll need to be patient: I experienced delays of up to 2 seconds while the camera focused, and I couldn't find any way to disable autofocus. The video recorder takes smooth but slightly over-sharp-looking videos at 240 by 180 pixels and 15 frames per second. The phone has only about 120MB of available onboard memory for pictures, music, and data, but you can store your data on a microSD card, which slips into a slot under the back cover (the phone ships with a 256MB card). Fortunately, you don't have to turn the phone off or remove the battery to swap out cards.

There's only one big problem here: the Web browser.

RIM really needs to work out its Web-browsing issues. The basic principle of the 8900's browser is fine: It serves up desktop-style pages at various levels of zoom, with JavaScript but without Flash. As long as JavaScript is enabled, though, the browser is prone to stalling on scripts. This isn't just a problem with EDGE's relatively poky Internet speeds; even over Wi-Fi, pages would stall for several seconds at a time as the browser choked on a JavaScript. If you turn off JavaScript, you risk large blank chunks of pages. Opera Mini loads pages more quickly than the 8900's default browser, but, in our tests, its menus stuttered a bit. Both browsers are usable; they're just not nearly as good as the WebKit-based ones on Apple or Nokia handsets, or on HTC's G1 Android phone.

But don't let our quibble with the Web browser deter you from picking up this excellent smartphone. For a little bit more money than the Sidekick LX or the T-Mobile G1, you get a much smoother experience. The G1 has a better Web browser, but it's a clunkier piece of hardware, and the 8900 is far superior in terms of media and messaging.

With the addition of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 to its lineup, T-Mobile now has a messaging phone for every age group: The Sidekick is the youngster; the Android-powered T-Mobile G1 is a bit of an ungainly adolescent; and the 8900 is all grown up. I'll bet it's the kind of BlackBerry President Obama wouldn't mind having. And with a recommendation like that, it's only fitting that the 8900 earn our Editors' Choice as the best smartphone in T-Mobile's lineup, ousting the aging Curve 8320. T-Mobile subscribers may also want to check out the unlocked Nokia E71, our Editors' Choice for unlocked smartphone. While the E71 is slimmer, with a better browser and more robust direct Microsoft Exchange support, the 8900 has a better camera and better media players, and can make calls over Wi-Fi.

by pcmag.com