In December I wanted to ditch my iPhone for a couple of reasons. So I got a Blackberry Curve 8900 and switched to rogers from fido.
1. I was getting bored of it.
2. It was not practical as a phone. (Great device, but as a phone its a no go will explain further down)
3. I could use better battery life (wasn’t terrible).
Purchase
The reason I got a blackberry was because lots of my friends had them as well as I wanted a more practical phone (blackberry is supposedly the most business type phone). Next I didn’t know if I spring for the Bold or the Curve 8900. After weighing the features I decided that I would go for the Curve as the only features that were better on the bold are Internal Memory Size, Speaker, and 3g Connectivity everything else (Screen resolution, Camera, Size etc.) were better in the 8900 curve. I had a friend that worked in Rogers that got me a great deal on the phone and a great plan (I end up paying around the same I did on fido, but now I had a blackberry data plan (Bis)). I ended up paying 112.87 for the phone (when I bought it it was suppose to be for 200 plus tax) and signed a 3 year contract.
Purchase:[rating:5]
Design
In the past blackberries were very ugly and nonuser friendly from my point of view. However RIM has obviously noticed this and kicked their design team into overtime. With the release of the 4.6 OS the Operating system looks much more snazzy and to my liking (might still have some non friendly issues, a drastic improvement). The hardware also has been designed very nicely on the Bold, Curve 8900, and Storm. The sleek new lines and thinness of the Curve 8900 is a win over the iPhone’s large size and weight (my opinion).
Design: [rating:4]
Features and Specifications
The phones features are great and the only thing missing is 3g, but to me I barley notice a difference (I currently use the bolt browser, its much faster than the normal blackberry browser). Whenever I’m home though and I really need to use the phone I just use wifi which is just a tad bit slower than on a computer. The battery life is great, I get on average 2-4 days on one charge (I’m not too heavy of a user). However if that is not enough juice for you, you can get the Seido Innocell 2600mAh Battery which has 90% more battery than the standard one, however it will make your phone larger. The phone charges relativly quick. and sports the new Micro-B usb spec.
Features and Specs:[rating:4]
Camera
The Camera on the curve actually shocked me! Since I’ve had a 3.2MP Nokia N80, and a 5MP Sony Ericsson k850i and they both turned out to be mediocre for camera phone quality (I would expect the k850i to be decent, but it was not) I was not expecting much from the 8900’s camera. I took a picture with the phone to send to a friend of my new shoes, it looked great, but I figured that was only on the phones screen. Once I uploaded it to the computer and opened it in its full size I was shocked that the quality was almost digital camera standards! Let’s just say that now I have a flickr account because of the camera on this phone! Here is the picture of the shoe(click on it to see the full Size: 2048×1536):
Camera:[rating:5]
Functionality and User friendliness
As I stated in the beggining of this review I switched to a blackberry because I felt I needed more practicality from my phone. I find the new blackberry os to be great in this respect, however it still lacks in the user friendliness department. Why do I say that? Well the reason is even though I consider myself a very tech savy person, I sometimes have trouble finding the location of certain settings on the device. Yes we all have a learning curve (haha pun intended), however on the blackberry os I found mine to be slower than on most devices I come in contact with. A feature that is so crucial to any phone (saving a number down while in a phone call) is not available on the iPhone. I thought this was the case with the blackberry, but a friend quickly showed me that you can take down a note (any type: a number, address, name etc) which gets saved in the call list. WOW I find that even greater than the normal number that just stays on the screen for nokias or Sony Ericsson, so thats a plus for the blackberry. Yet I still have to deduct points for the non user friendliness.
Functionality and User friendliness: [rating:3.5]
Final thoughts
I really think RIM has outdone themselves with this phone. It’s great all round, and I think this should be their flagship, not the bold. I also like that blackberryies just like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and the iPhone, supports user upgrading. I’m currently using the .174 beta build and its great. I have all my contacts save on the Mac OS X address book so syncing was easy with Pocket Mac. In the future though I would like to see more Mac OS X software such as desktop manager. Finally there is a supposed 3g version comming out at the end of 2009 codenamed the Gemini 9300. But I’m sticking with my 8900 for now!
[rating:overall]
Thanks for the review. For me it was the keyboard that won me over to the BlackBerry. Here is good link on the subject:
http://goffconcepts.com/techarticles/phones/phone2009.html
If you don’t mind me asking, what was the monthly plan that you got from Rogers? The best I’ve been able to concoct is the $17.50 + $30 BB VP + SAF/911/tax = ~$62/month.
Hey Michael, I think this is the same plan that I am on, give or take a few dollars. However since I am a student I get some discounts here or there, I do however end up paying more for international calls etc. Hope that helps!
Thanks Kush. The reason I ask is I’m currently with Fido and I’m debating between paying for an unlocked 8900 and staying with Fido or jumping over to Rogers to get a subsidized 8900.
I see above that your product spec listing says “YES” for predictive text input – I have just got a BB 8900 but can’t find how to activate predictive text. Can you help?
Thanks.
Hello, the predictive input is coming soon for version 5 of the operating system, it is not available yet!
I left a similar blog on http://www.trubbles.com havent had to great of luck with the device not sure if its my T-mobile service or the phone but either way it drops calls and internet is slow
Have you upgraded your phone? There have been many software releases that might fix the issues you are having! 🙂
I got my blackberry curve 8900 t-mobile from ebay only because it has wi-fi. I have been playing with it for 6 hours to figure it out how I can access the internet and instant messaging via wi-fi but whenever I try to do it it leads me to get the t-mobile data plan. I don’t want to get a data plan. I want to use it with wi-fi. I connected the phone to my home wi-fi and it shows next to the t-mobile and also shows uma instead of edge. I don’t know what I need to do to access the internet. I am not buying the stupid data plan. NEED HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey, which shoes are those?
Those are the Nike Shox. I like them a lot. I have not found any nicer ones!
one year later now…any further comments on this device? I have withstood the urge to throw my pearl flip under the front wheels of a bus, and the salesman that sold it to me under the back, for the last 18 months. Yesterday I called Rogers and told them I was leaving them for a competitor…for two reasons the pearl flip, and the cost.
Salesman offered me some discounts and freebies, and considering the hassle of changing everything I decoided to stay…unfortunately, one of the hooks was a curve 8520, which he suggested would be MUCH better than my flip….two cans with a tight string would be better than that flip. Today I surf…and find out that the 8520 has no flash for the camera, (Very Important to me) and is an “entry level”…. AKA… POS bb.. So I do some more research and Rogers offer this 8900 (which I think now comes with OS 5)… whatever…but I don’t think it is G3 enabled….and that seems to be the leading edge today.
Just very tired of being over sold, and under delivered. Any suggestions? I use it MOSTLY for the phine device but IF the Data features were ACTUALLY usable, I might use some of them. GPS is a feature I would like to have,but that cost mor, so I would just buy a free to use GPS device, if that became a need.
Pearl Flip downfalls:
Terrible phone quality
Terrible keypad,
Terrible Phone quality,
Terrible predictive text,
Terrible phone quality,
Terrible screen resolution,
did I mention terrible phone quality?
Terrible screen size,
Terrible voice calling and voice response.
Usless as a BB device.
oh, and one last thing,
Terrible phone quality.
Decent camera though, WITH A FLASH.
I read that review before writing my comment and noticed it was a year old… That was why I asked if there were any new comments….from you, or yur readers..before I re-commit to something I’m going to dislike in a heartbeat.
Very good blog though. I much enjoyed the clean easy toread style, and the excellent comments your readers left behind…This is a stand-out blog in my eyes.
Well Done Sir.
Thanks for comming to our home for the World’s Greatest Winter Olympics. Hope you had a great time here. We enjoyed having you, and the rest of the world.
Thanks for your comments, they really made my day! A year later, I am back to the iPhone os. I’m currently using my iPhone 3GS. Blackberries are not for me. Currently though I would have to say the best Blackberry is the 9700. It has 3G data as you were asking about. Rogers has this phone, so you should pressure them into giving it to you for free. Anyways if you have anymore questions let me know.