LAS VEGAS – AT&T has the Bold. Verizon has the Storm. Now T-Mobile has their very own next-generation BlackBerry: the BlackBerry Curve 8900, which combines some of the top features from previous BlackBerry lines.
The hybrid Curve takes the Curve's much-loved separated keyboard, and combines it with the Bold's high-res 2.4-inch 360x480 screen, plus the Storm's 3.2-megapixel camera. The device was announced at the CES 2008 show here.
The 8900 is made from hard plastic, much like the Curve, though the black color is Bold-like and the sleek back cover takes a cue from the Storm. Measuring 4.29 inches x 2.36 inches x 0.53 inches and 3.87 ounces, it's ever so slightly slimmer and lighter than T-Mobile's existing popular Curve 8320. Like the 8320, it runs on T-Mobile's EDGE network, for decent but not great Internet speeds nationwide, and supplements that with Wi-Fi, including voice calls over T-Mobile's Wi-Fi "HotSpot Calling" system, formerly known as HotSpot@Home. That Wi-Fi calling feature offers unlimited voice calls for $10/month over any Wi-Fi network.
The innards of the 8900 seem more like the Bold's than the Curve's. It has a 528-MHz processor running the latest BlackBerry OS 4.6, including a pumped-up media player with native support for DivX, Xvid, MP4 and WMV video files, and pretty much all unprotected audio files. There's GPS, stereo Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and 480x352 video recording on the lovely 3.2-megapixel camera.
The beefy 1400 mAh battery is rated for 5.5 hours of talk time, but I think it'll get much longer than that on power-sipping EDGE networks; this device could last several days on a charge.
Like the Bold and Storm, the 8900 uses the latest version of the BlackBerry desktop software, which syncs with Outlook, Windows Media Player and iTunes on PCs. The BlackBerry desktop software is clunky – nowhere near as smooth as the iPhone's – but it definitely beats the T-Mobile G1, which has no direct PC syncing options at all.
In my experience, the Curve's keyboard layout has been extremely popular – much more popular than the Bold's close-together keys, though people like the Bold for other reasons. At this price, and on value-focused T-Mobile, I think the 8900 is going to be very successful. I'll have a full review in February.
The BlackBerry 8900 has been out in Canada, on Rogers Wireless, and in Germany on T-Mobile for a while, but this is its U.S. debut. It will be available in February; T-Mobile did not announce a price as yet.
Source : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337961,00.asp
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