Hands-on with the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900

T-Mobile currently has the UK exclusive on the new RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 and everyone else (well, O2 customers, at least) will have to wait until 5th January to get their hands on it (not technically correct, as it turns out ...). It’s available from today, but seeing as it’s a bit nippy out, we thought you’d appreciate some hands-on video action from the comfort of your computer screen.

As you can see, the 8900 (or ‘Javelin’) is a bit of a visual departure from previous Curves and RIM has pinched bits of both the BlackBerry Bold and Storm for its design. The result is far from a Frankenstein hotchpotch though, and the Curve 8900 is both stylish and substantial. It’s also RIM’s slimmest BlackBerry to date and although it’s smaller than the BlackBerry Bold, it hasn’t sacrificed usability.

The keyboard ahs the familiar RIM curve and although the keys are comparatively small, they’re widely spaced with a tall profile that makes them easy to press with a thumb.

The BlackBerry Curve 8900’s most notable feature is its screen and although it only has a 2.4in diagonal, it has a whopping 480 x 360 resolution – the same as on the BlackBerry Storm. The small size and high pixel density make images look razor sharp, but although videos look particularly crisp and vibrant, they’re a bit too small to watch comfortably.

Still, the Curve 8900 does turn in a strong multimedia performance – it has a 3.5mm headphone socket and the music playback application, while not on a par with the iPhone, is handled with the usual simple but effective BlackBerry aplomb.

Alas, this being a BlackBerry, it’s not all good news and while the Curve 8900 has Wi-Fi and dual-band GPRS/EDGE support, there’s no 3G. For T-Mobile customers, this means all non-hotspot internet access must be done at GPRS speeds (T-Mobile has no UK EDGE network), which means you might as well not bother. It also means that the Curve 8900 is useless as a laptop modem, but this would breach T-Mobile’s T&Cs anyway.  

Unfortunately, even over Wi-Fi, the Curve 8900’s web browser performance is lacking. Like early models of the BlackBerry Bold, JavaScript-heavy we pages take a long time to process, as our hands-on video shows. You can disable JavaScript in the browser settings, but deliberately crippling the web browser’s ability to display pages properly just to speed it up seems self-defeating to us. RIM did fix the Bold’s browser performance with a firmware update though, so we hope something similar will happen for the Curve 8900.

Otherwise, the Curve 8900 is business as usual for a BlackBerry and the v4.6 firmware is much the same as that on the Bold (at least in terms of look and feel). Both the Bold and Curve 8900 lack one increasingly important feature, though – the ability to install third-party applications over-the-air. The Storm could do it, but for some reason, the Bold and Curve 8900 cannot, which means you need to install applications via their web page or with the BlackBerry Desktop application – not a huge problem, but an extra step that neither the iPhone nor the T-Mobile G1 require.

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 is available for free on T-Mobile’s £35/month Flext 30 tariff, and the “unlimited” (the usual yada yada) data deal compares favourably with that of the iPhone and T-Mobile G1. So, the Curve 8900 should still be a strong contender for anyone looking for a capable multimedia smartphone. Yes, there are some silly omissions, but these won’t deter everyone and the straightforward, consistent BlackBerry experience does offset them to some degree – particularly compared to the curious mish-mash of Android 1.0.

Footnote

Despite its exclusive deal supposedly starting today, at the time of writing (6.35pm on Friday), T-Mobile has yet to post any information about the BlackBerry Curve 8900 on its site, but guess what! Carphone Warehouse is listing the smartphone as being available for free from both O2 and Orange on £35/£40 (respectively) 18-month contracts. Since O2 has an EDGE network in the UK (for iPhone 2G users), this makes the Curve 8900 a slightly more sensible choice for anyone who needs speedier mobile internet access.