Blackberry has always been a phone company to develop stylish, useful, practical, user friendly, and functional phones that are also good value for your money, and this time around, Blackberry Curve 8300 is definitely no exception.

A Glimpse of the Features

Blackberry Curve 8300 has features similar to that of other Blackberry phones, particularly the 8800, but after a closer look, you may find that the keyboards are different, blackberry 8800 has larger keys while the 8300 sports some smaller, but well-separated keys which makes the navigation, typing and text messaging more easy for you. On the other hand, some might have a bit of difficulty with the navigational controls, but you may grow on it as the time goes by, so there’s really no problem there. Another advantage of Blackberry Curve 8300 compared to other similar phones is it feels more like a lovely handset with compact dimensions which makes it more sleeker and sexer than those qwerty phones of the similar generation. Black berry 8300 does lack a GPS antenna but with the Blackberry Maps (fees depend on your plan and your provider) and built in Bluetooth, the navigation is not a problem at all.

Regular features like a music player, as well as 2 megapixel camera with a 5x zoom magnification are available, but thses are not the selling points of Blackberry Curve 8300. The 8300 also sports a 3.5mm jack for plugging in a headset or speakers (but the inboard speakers are very well too). The 2.5-inch screen has 65,000 colors with a 320×240 pixel resolution. One of the smaller cooler things are the keyboard LEDs, which automatically adjust to compensate for lack of ambient light. It is also possible to transfer date from and into the phone through USB connectivity.

The Downside

The downside for Blackberry Curve 8300 is its lack of Wi-Fi or even 3G connectivity, which is a definite turn-off for people who are seeking for a business phone. The internal memory is also a bit lacking, standing at 64 megabyte, but can me remedied through external microSD memory. The camera is good for still photos but it cannot record video, which is a bit of a bummer.

Basically, the Blackberry Curve is reliant on technology and applications that are reliant on Bluetooth, which puts a big damper on what would otherwise be a great phone. It might have something to do with the scaling down of the phone to become slimmer and lighter – which is really either a good thing or bad thing, depending on the person who plans to use it. If you’re planning to use it primarily for business purposes and / or are in need of Wi-Fi or 3G connectivity, then the 8300 is not for you.

However, if these lacking features are not a hindrance, then except for the lack of video recording capability, Blackberry Curve 8300 does well in all other aspects – battery life, user friendliness, value for money, tactile and responsive keypad, stable operating system (which is of course, the Blackberry OS). This is definitely one of Blackberry’s phones that are geared to more casual users, who have no need of frequently connecting to the internet to check on important messages all the time. Blackberry Curve 8300 is a very casual phone, despite its qwerty nature, so the final decision really rests on the buyer, depending on his or her needs.