RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is RIM’s attempt to produce a low-cost BlackBerry and hopefully attract a new kind of user – businesses on a tighter budget, consumers who are yet to take the smartphone plunge. The question, as always when a premium supplier attempts to slash costs to attract new buyers, is does it make the cutbacks in the right areas? And is the price still too high?

Looks and feel

Some, a little uncharitably, have described the BlackBerry Curve 8520 as the “cheap and nasty” little brother to the Curve 8900. And this is understandable, as we cover in the Cut-down specs section further down the page.

It certainly feels plasticky, and doesn’t have the ruggedness of Nokia’s similarly priced E71. However, one nice innovation is the small trackpad-style button you use for navigation. This replaces the clickable wheel in phones like the Pearl, and due to the lack of moving parts RIM claims it’s inherently sturdier.

Time will tell, but once you get used to its miniscule size the trackpad does make it easy to navigate around the screen. Considering this device’s price, we’re surprised by the quality of the screen: it’s bright, sharp, and there’s none of the graininess that can plague low-cost panels. On its own, it also looks quite vibrant. Place the 8520 next to a BlackBerry Bold and it’s clearly a lower grade panel, but few will complain and both photos and movie trailers look fine.

The lower-resolution screen – 320 x 240 – is more of a limitation when it comes to web browsing, but thanks to RIM’s highly capable web browser it’s quite simple to zoom in and out. The problem comes when you want to read a longer story and need to keep on pressing down to get to the next chunk.

Cut-down specs?

Some will instantly dismiss the Curve 8520 for internet browsing due to its lack of 3G – instead, this phone relies on venerable technologies such as GPRS and EDGE (plus, naturally, quad-band GSM). However, due to the way RIM handles internet browsing – essentially using clever compression technology to reduce data demands – this didn’t prove a hurdle in real-world use.

Even complex pages like www.pcpro.co.uk load up in a few seconds. We also downloaded a 220KB program from BlackBerry App World in around 15 seconds; hardly an awful wait. The bigger problem comes if you’re having a conference call and want to check your email as you simply won’t be able to.

RIM has also sacrificed GPS in its mission to reduce the price, but we’re pleased to see Wi-Fi is included as part of the package. Our only caveat is that this will quickly destroy your battery life if you accidentally leave it on. To keep the Curve 8520 slim, RIM opts for a small battery, so our hopes for the Curve in our battery life benchmarks weren’t high.

However, due to the low power demands of BlackBerry OS 4.6 and the GPRS radio, it kept going for seven days – despite the fact it was polling for email every half hour. In everyday use, we’re confident it can keep going for three or four days without a struggle.