BlackBerry Curve 8300

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Features
The RIM BlackBerry Curve doesn't offer anything revolutionary in the features department (read: No Wi-Fi or 3G support), but as mentioned previously, there are some slight enhancements. First, the Curve adds a new spellcheck functionality for emails. As you would expect, the feature will look for any spelling errors in your messages before they're sent and offer alternatives to misspelled words. Spellcheck is also available for memos, but not for text messages. You can turn this feature on under the Options > Spell Check menu, where you can also find settings to ignore acronyms, words with numbers, add words to a custom dictionary, and more. During our review period, the feature worked great, and it definitely comes in handy--especially if you're sending messages to clients, your boss, and other professionals.

	The BlackBerry Curve gets a camera upgrade with a 2-megapixel sensor and a 5x zoom lens.

The BlackBerry Curve is compatible with your company's BlackBerry Enterprise server with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise to deliver corporate email in real time. In total, the device can support as many as 10 accounts, including POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts, and there is an email wizard on the device to guide you through the setup process. An attachment viewer is also onboard to open popular file formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, PDFs, JPEG, GIF, and more, and we were able to receive and open all files. Other messaging options include text, multimedia, and instant messaging, although the latter is limited to the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger client.

As for voice features, the Curve is a quadband world phone and offers a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, speed dial, and support AT&T/Cingular's push-to-talk service. In addition, the phone features advanced audio technology that's supposed to cancel out background noise and echoes and will automatically increase the volume when you're in a noisy environment. (See the Performance section below for more on call quality). The BlackBerry 8300's phonebook is limited only by the available memory--the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts--with room in each entry for eight phone numbers, email addresses, work and home addresses, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo to a contact as well a group category--business or personal--or one of 45 polyphonic ringtones. The Curve also supports MP3 and MIDI ring tones.

Once again, wireless options on this BlackBerry are pretty disappointing. There's no integrated Wi-Fi nor is there 3G support. You're reduced to surfing the Web at EDGE speeds which, yes, aren't that slow but also aren't very fast. Also, unlike the BlackBerry 8800, the Curve doesn't include a GPS radio. Instead, you will have take advantage of the device's integrated Bluetooth and add this functionality via a Bluetooth GPS receiver. Other supported profiles include wireless headsets, handsfree kits, dial-up networking, object exchange, and A2DP for stereo Bluetooth headsets.

One-upping the BlackBerry Pearl, the Curve boasts a 2-megapixel camera (vs. 1.3 megapixels) with a 5x zoom and a built-in flash, but unfortunately, still no video-recording capabilities. You do get three picture sizes (1,600 x 1,200; 1,024 x 768; and 640 x 480) and three quality options (superfine, fine, and normal). You can also tweak the white balance and add color effects. That said, we were pretty disappointed by the quality of the pictures. Though the images had sharp definition, the colors were off and had a gray overtone.

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