Review: Blackberry Curve 8520

For many years BlackBerry held the position as the de-facto enterprise handset, thanks largely to its superb email functionality and management features.

In recent months this situation has changed, driven by the demand from workers wanting to use other – often personal – smartphones to send and receive business email, and access enterprise network applications and services.

As a result Research in Motion (RIM) has gone a long way to try and make the BlackBerry more consumer friendly by adding features such as multimedia support, the BlackBerry Internet Server and recently BlackBerry App World.

The BlackBerry 8520 – the latest addition to the Curve family – continues this trend by adding a much more affordable device to the family.

Design
The 8520 keeps with the Curve's basic candybar design with a full Qwerty keyboard, but the familiar rollerball has been replaced with an optical trackpad. Those familiar with the rollerball should have no problem getting used to the trackpad because it works by sliding your finger over the sensor. It is pretty intuitive and even new users should not have much problem getting the hang of navigating with it.

It has to be said that the case itself does feel quite cheap and plasticky, but thankfully it is still very sturdy and should stand up to the rigours of everyday life without disintegrating.

Similarly, the keyboard does not feel quite as high quality as that on the Bold, but the keys are still quite tactile and typing at speed is pretty easy, even for those with slightly larger hands.

Although not particularly large, the 2.46in 320x240 screen is pretty impressive, with bright colours and good clarity so reading emails and updating social networks certainly will not be a problem and even viewing video is pr etty reasonable – hindered more by the size rather than the quality of the display.

Multimedia support
Speaking of multimedia, the 8520 also includes a row of media control keys along the top of the phone allowing users to play, pause, skip and mute music and video. There are also volume controls and two customisable keys on the sides of the phone, all of which are housed under a sleek looking rubberised coating.

On the side there is also a 3.5mm audio jack and an increasingly common micro-USB connector for charging and data transfer.

The 8520 sports a 2-megapixel camera on the back, which takes pretty reasonable shots given the specification, but the lack of flash means that low light conditions render it almost useless.

While the 8520 does support Wi-Fi 802.11 and full Bluetooth 2.0, there is no integrated GPS and more noticeably no 3G either. While the majority of today's smartphones include both of these, many users may find themselves happy to get by on Edge data and Wi-Fi hotspots.

Operating system
Despite its budget nature and slightly reduced specifications, the 8520 runs the same operating system as all the other current BlackBerry devices and has full access to the BlackBerry App World content store.

Compared to some of today's operating systems, the BlackBerry interface can feel somewhat clunky and cumbersome, but for those familiar with it the 8520 will feel just the same as any other BlackBerry around.

The 8520 ran all the apps we tried very smoothly with only the odd bit of lag, usually caused by a lot of data transfer. As well as the basics such as email and calls, the phone had no problem handling any of the apps we tried including video playback and games. Similarly, playing music while handling email or checking Twitter was not a problem.

Probably the only real gripe when it came to using the 8520 was web browsing as the small screen and slower data connection do not lend themselves well to trying to navigate full web pages, so you'll spend a lot of time twiddling your thumbs followed by scrolling around the page and zooming in and out trying to find the information you're looking for.

Under the hood
When it comes to storing applications and other data, users have access to 256MB of memory onboard, but this can be expanded through a microSD slot for those who want to store music, video, photos or other large files on the device.

Although the lack of 3G may put off heavy data users the upside is that the battery life is improved and again RIM has shown that cheap doesn't have to translate into sub-par. Unless you spend several hours a day talking on your mobile, even fairly heavy email users should get around three days between charges, making it quite appealing to those who spend most of their day out of reach of a plug socket.

We've mentioned throughout this review that the 8520 is the budget BlackBerry and it will be sold through some operators for £200 on pay-as-you-go and for free on a £25 a month contract which includes data access and a BlackBerry Internet Server account for push email.

This makes the 8520 an ideal phone for just about anyone - from a personal user to a small business - looking for a fairly basic smartphone with a strong emphasis on email and business, but with consumer features like media, social networking and a few games thrown in.

For those large businesses running their own BlackBerry Enterprise Server, the cheap price of the 8520 may make it appealing to roll out to contractors or employees who may not have qualified for a BlackBerry before, but for whom mobile email access would be a benefit.