Still not bored of my Blackberry (Blackberry Curve 8300)

Member Name: non_sense

Product:	Blackberry Curve 8300
Date:	15/10/08 (105 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Email, media, camera

Disadvantages: Can be expensive on some data plans, occasional freeze/switch off

I've always loved owning a Blackberry, but as RIM face more and more competition from competing products they've had to become more innovative with their designs and product offerings.

I have previously owned a 7290 and an 8700g, both great phones with the famous Blackberry addictive email quality thrown in. If you get the right tariff with unlimited data you can do all the instant messaging, email and web surfing (slow web surfing) that you can manage.

The 8800 and 8300 (Curve) were released around the same time, I had a choice between getting the 8800 which had Wi-fi, or the 8300 that had a camera.

I was excited to get the Blackberry 8300 in September 2007, it has the full keyboard familiar to most Blackberry users (yes, some do not have full keyboards, but most do). The striking difference for those that have used previous models is that the clickwheel has gone. That took some adjustment for me, my thumb would almost permanently be attached to that clickwheel, scrolling through messages, playing games and clicking through web pages. The trackball that has replaced it is actually better in my opinion, but I didn't think so for a couple of weeks! It scrolls pretty much where you expect it to and it lights up when it's dark.

Other cool things about the 8300 include the media features. You can play back avi files, mp3s and view photos. Audio playback can be through the phones internal speaker (quality as poor as you would expect) or via a standard headphone socket. The phone also features a 2MP camera. Storage for all this stuff can be handled by a micro SD card, I have a 4GB one in mine and I am constantly taking pictures with the phone. I don't bother with the Blackberry desktop software, I just attach a USB cable and with mass storage mode enabled you can use the phones SD card as if it were an external drive on your PC, just drag and drop photos onto your PC or music onto your Blackberry.

You can install Google maps or Blackberry maps onto the 8300 and connect it to a GPS receiver via Bluetooth. Of course I would actually suggest buying the 8310, 8320 or 8330 if that is your aim, as they have a GPS receiver built in.

So I definitely recommend this phone, whether you want to take out a Blackberry data plan or not, if only for it's phone and media features. But be aware that the other Curve models have more features (GPS, Wi-fi for instance) and that newer Blackberry models (Storm, Bold) take these things to a new level.

To mention the call quality, it seems much better to my ear than my friends phones that include Samsung and Nokia models.

I'm still happy with this phone 13 months after purchase. It has had the occasional freeze or unexpected switch off, but I can live with that every 6 weeks or so!

Summary: A great all round phone with the usual great Blackberry features