When my trusty Nokia 5530 Illuvial (pink) decided to go a bit nutty on me..... freezing, turning off etc.. I decided I wanted a new mobile but I thought I'd jump on the Blackberry bandwagon, so went in search of one I liked.
I was browsing in phones 4 u and the o2 shops and liked the look of this phone and decided that it would be the one I wanted. I carried on with my shopping waiting to meet up with my hubby to let him know and popped into cash generator where they had a Blackberry in the phone display case, usually the phones are a bit battered and worse for the wear but this actually looked in pretty good condition.
It was price marked at £79.99 whilst in the other shops it was around £149.99. I then suspected that the phone may well be damaged but asked to have a look at it anyway.

To my delight it was immaculate, shiny and new looking just with no box, so I bought it.... well I put the deposit on it ready for my hubby to buy it!

After meeting up with him and letting him know, he went up to the shop and bought the phone but told me I wasn't to have it until Christmas! (I had it before haha!)

I liked the Blackberry Curve 9300, it looked shiny and sleek and as most of my friends have a Blackberry BBM was probably my main reason for purchasing it.

Getting it home I tried to turn the phone on but there was no power so I plugged in the charger and left it, what I didn't know was that this turns on the phone and a loading screen pops up, it seemed to take forever for the phone to load and at first I did think the worse, I then had a security screen pop up and after that the phone was fine.

It was locked to the vodafone network which I didn't want to use so after looking online I found a site called free my blackberry and after sending them the relevant details they sent me a code which unlocked the phone, enabling me to use any sim card! Brilliant.

As I have it on a pay as you go I didn't first realise that I had to change my tariff to include BBM, it puzzled me for about a day until I realised and then I was fine.

The phone operates really well, I find the QWERTY keypad fine but people with larger fingers (like my hubby) can struggle with it a bit as the keys are very small. A massive annoyance I have found whilst texting is that double clicking the space bar actually leaves you with a full stop.... Grrr!
I find the little tracker pad really accurate but if your hands are even slightly damp it will go a little bit mad and fly all over the screen stopping where it sees fit! A bit of a nuisance when someone texts whilst you are doing the dishes etc..

The camera is okay, not perfect but I don't really have any problems with it.

Like a previous reviewer has already mentioned, using the internet can sometimes be a bit of a hassle as pages will close if they are too large and this does become annoying at times. For mobile sites it works fine but some pages will not open at all and you will be sent back to the home page.

The blackberry app store is simple and easy to use and apps are readily available, as I don't have an iphone to compare it to, I think it's fine but people have said that the apps available for the other are so much better!

The blackberry is wider than your average mobile phone and does feel somewhat strange at first but you soon get used to it.

For the first 3 weeks or so I hated this phone so much, I don't know why but I did. But after taking my old phone out with me as my blackberry battery wasn't charged I realised I couldn't operate a touch screen phone anymore! I now love my blackberry as does my son who has been nagging for one since I had mine!

I like the overall design of the phone and making calls is as simple as any other phone. To use the number keypad hold down the little alt button.

Its a great phone for social networking too.
The battery life is really good and I charge it every two days or so, I make a couple of calls, and mainly text, browse the internet and also use the apps and it doesn't drain the battery straight away.

I love my blackberry and think I will be sticking with this for a while yet!