RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 Review

Multimedia:

The 8900 Curve upgrades to a 3.2 megapixel camera and a centralized media player, which allows the user to play and manage music, videos, ringtones, pictures and voice notes.

The media player is good and simple to use, but not overly loaded with features. It supports folders, and will sort your music by Artist, Album and Genres. It also supports album art and playlists, which the user can create on the go, and the other options are Repeat and Shuffle. Audio formats supported are MP3, AMR-NB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, WMA and WAV, while the video formats are MPEG4, H.263 and WMV.  As you would expect videos look wonderful on the high resolution screen.  The included stereo headphones are pretty poor, but the 3.5mm jack means you can use any headphones you want.  With our higher quality headphones music sounded very good.


The 3.2 megapixel camera performed well, better than the 3.2MP shooter found in the Storm.  Pictures were crisp and color saturation was natural. They were still a little dark, but we really had to nitpick to find something wrong with it. Options are sparse, the only real adjustment is the white balance, but the results speak for themselves. Especially since the camera is almost an ancillary feature we were pleasantly surprised with its performance on the Curve.


Video performance was more pedestrian. It records at 240x180 in normal mode or 176x144 for MMS mode, and is more on-par with what you’d expect from a cell phone. Performance isn’t bad, it’s just not good. The only option is Color Effect, and videos can only be recorded when using a memory card.


Software:

The Curve 8900 doubles the memory of the most well-endowed 83xx Curve with 256MB on board, and allows for microSD expansion up to 16GB.  The OS ran smoothly, and we did not experience any lockups or even momentary hangs.  This is even more impressive given that it runs the graphically richer 4.6 OS, as opposed to older versions found on previous Curves.

Included software is very sparse, with only a few standards along for the ride.  DataViz’s Documents to Go Standard Edition adds Word, Excel and Power Point support.  RIM has packaged four games with the 8900: Word Mole, Texas Hold ‘Em King 2, Klondike (solitaire) and of course the ever-popular Briack Breaker.  BlackBerry maps takes advantage of the internal GPS, but unlike the other major carriers there is no other GPS software included.

Third party GPS solutions are of course available, such as Google Maps.  Other third party applications can be downloaded also; our favorites include Opera Mini, Facebook and Flickr.  There is decent third party support for BlackBerry, but it is not as extensive as Windows Mobile, Palm or the iPhone.