Sprint (Red) Blackberry 8330 Curve PDA
The Blackberry Curve 8330 shares all of the same features as its GSM cousin. The phone features a 2.0 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, EVDO data speed, expandable memory card slot, media player, and a large QVGA display.
Blackberry Curve 8330------AWESOME (2008-11-09)
I agree 100% with Eric's review dated Octobe 15, 2008. I've had my Curve since October 20th and wsa just about to write an extensive review, but his addressed all of my topics very well. I've been a company-supplied Palm user for many years, but now that I have a Blackberry I see what all of the hype is about. As long as Blackberry/RIM keep producing/improving a product like this, I'll never go back to Palm. The only thing I recommend for the user is to invest in the biggest MicroSD card you can find. I travel a lot and like my music, so I purchased an 8meg card and don't regret it one iota.
If you're in the market for a new PDA/phone, you'll be very happy with the 8330 Curve.
Love it! (2008-10-23)
I bought this phone about a month ago. Before I had a plam centro which was great but the blackberry had all I was looking for and more! I love it and don't know what I would do without it.
Very cool gadget (2008-10-15)
This phone rocks. As a former Palm user, I was wary of the lack of a touch screen, but so far I haven't noticed its absence.
To get the shortcomings out of the way first, there were some odd decisions made on some of the phone aspects of this device. Doing something as simple as putting it into silent mode involves scrolling, clicking icons, and far too much of your attention. It is a mystery why they didn't short cut global volume levels to, oh I don't know... maybe the volume buttons on the side of the phone? And like any good subsidized piece of hardware, there are lots of cluttery icons to download programs you don't need. Oddly, these icons only seem to be able to be "hidden" and shoved in folders and forgotten about, not deleted (at least not in any intuitive way).
That said this device rocks. It plays mp3s, videos, and unlike more proprietary phones and gadgets, allows any developer to make software for it, much like a Palm device. While this is good news for developers, it's great for users who want free software. In one night I searched the web and found Google maps with GPS, the lightweight Opera browser and several free games of surprising quality.
The package includes the phone itself, a USB cable (any of the right plug size will work), a slip case of dubious usefulness, a wall charger and earbuds that double as a wired headset.
The phone is surprisingly small and lightweight for a PDA phone. The trackball works fairly well, though some of the games I played with it seemed to imply it's not as smooth as it could be. The keys are very small -- you won't be typing at 80 words a minute, but the tactile feedback from physical buttons is far easier and more accurate than a touch screen. With time, I was able to type accurately. Unlike my old phone, the shortcut buttons on the side can be customized. If you don't want your phone yelling "SAY A COMMAND!" at you every time you accidentally hit one, I recommend taking advantage of this feature.
The desktop manager software it comes with took a very long time to install on my computer, which was odd. But it works well enough. I was able to import all of my old contacts from a CSV file. One shortcoming here was it would only import or export CSV, not sync, and you have to "Configure synch" and point it to the CSV file you're trying to use. Not a huge issue since the phone was brand new, but something to be aware of. If you don't want to use Outlook to manage contacts this is the way to do it, and I recommend exporting a file first to see the format if you intend to do this as well.
It also comes with some Roxio Media Manager software to manage media files. Usually I avoid these types of programs like the plague, but I found this software handy as it will do things like resize photos & videos and recompress music & video files to use less space. While you can certainly do this yourself and copy the files directly to the device, I found it much simpler to allow the Media Manager software to handle it. I recommend selecting "Advanced Conversion Options" the first time you copy files and setting photos to jpg 640x480, video files to mp4 -- smallest file size and audio to mp3 44KHz 128kpbs stereo, and check "Use these settings as default". From then on, you can use the "Convert for Optimal Playback" option when copying and maximize your limited memory. The program's interface isn't the greatest. I would prefer a standard windows file view over their clunky icons any day, but software does its for the most part. The software converted music and photos well enough, but of the 3 videos I tried to convert, 1 failed and 1 claimed success but would only play audio. The only video that converted was mp4 to begin with. This wasn't too surprising though, there are far too many video formats out there. The video that did worked converted beautifully. I intend to spend more time with some other conversion software to see what the optimal way to convert videos is.
Media on the Curve is great. Photos look fantastic, music sounds great, and videos play smoothly. Using the "smallest file size" option in the Roxio software produced artifacts that weren't readily noticeable when holding the phone at a comfortable distance. 640x480 Photos were clear as long as I didn't zoom in too much -- The phone allows you to zoom in and crop photos to use for contacts or for your desktop; so if you intend to zoom in and crop you might want to do this on your PC first rather than storing an unnecessarily large file on your phone.
I am extremely satisfied with this device. Some of the software needs work, but that's what's great about an open operating system like that of the Blackberry -- someone can write better software any time. And unlike a closed platform, neither Sprint nor RIM can decide to shut down a piece of software they think competes too well with their own.
0 ความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น