Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #525 in Cell Phone Accessories
• Color: Red
• Brand: Blackberry
• Model: S8330RIMAR
• Released on: 2008-08-22

Features

• Smallest, lightest BlackBerry with full QWERTY keyboard features GPS turn-by-turn directions via Sprint Navigation
• Sprint Mobile Broadband Network via EV-DO connectivity; Sprint TV and Sprint Music Store enabled; access personal and corporate email
• 2-megapixel camera/camcorder; Bluetooth for handsfree devices and stereo music streaming; MicroSD expansion up to 8 GB
• Up to 5.9 hours of talk time and up to 264 hours (11 days) of standby time
• Includes: handset, rechargeable battery, charger, USB cable, 3.5mm headphones with microphone, 1 GB MicroSD card, quick start guide

Amazon.com Product Description
Adding a fashionable touch to Research in Motion's formidable arsenal of telephonic, PIM, and media tools, the BlackBerry 8330 Curve for Sprint is also the smallest, lightest BlackBerry phone that includes a full QWERTY keyboard. This amalgam of the svelte BlackBerry Pearl and the more business-oriented 8800 combines RIM's long-valued corporate email and messaging platform with a host of advanced multimedia features, including a 2-megapixel camera and stereo Bluetooth (for listening to music via wireless headphones). It also offers GPS navigation capabilities for accessing the optional Sprint Navigation turn-by-turn direction service.

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Sprint Service Options
Supporting the EV-DO high-speed data standard, this phone enables you to download and stream high-quality video, straight onto your phone. Where coverage is available, EV-DO connectivity provides average download speeds ranging from 400 to 700 Kbps, with peak rates up to 2 Mbps. With Sprint TV, you can make your cell phone your always-on source for news, weather, sports and more. This comprehensive video service combines high-quality streaming audio and video from channels including the NFL Network, ABC, The Weather Channel, Fox Sports, E!, CNN, The Discovery Channel, and more.

The Sprint Music Store enables you to buy, download, and then jam out wherever you are with new songs or old favorites. Offering a growing selection of more than 1.6 million songs, the store provides you two copies of each song--one for the phone and another for the PC, as well as the ability to burn songs to a CD using Windows Media Player. Save your songs to a memory card with a capacity that's right for you.

This GPS-enabled phone provides optional access to Sprint Navigation for driving directions on your mobile phone--by voice and onscreen. Along the way, turn-by-turn directions will be announced in a clear voice and displayed on your phone. For example, Sprint Navigation will say, "Go 1.2 miles and turn right on Elm Street." As you approach the turn, you will hear, "Turn right on Elm Street." Sprint Navigation also provides proactive traffic alerts with one click re-routing. And it's easy to find restaurants, banks, cafes, hotels and more from over 10 million points of interest across the U.S.

The Curve's full QWERTY keyboard and the innovative trackball navigation system (placed above the keyboard) makes accessing your data and writing email a breeze.

Staying Connected
With BlackBerry's push email technology, your email will find you without having to initiate a connection. BlackBerry devices are designed to remain on and continuously connected to the wireless network, notifying you as new email arrives. In addition to the text, you can also receive and view attachments in a wide range of popular file formats, including Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect, and Adobe PDF.

Browse the web with the integrated, full-featured browser, which quickly and efficiently displays HTML pages as well as enables you to set up RSS feeds to stay connected to up-to-the-minute news and blog posts. And keep up with your contacts using a variety of instant message (IM) networks, including the integrated Blackberry Messenger as well as downloadable clients for Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, and Lotus Sametime.

For corporate users, the Curve delivers all the enterprise email and messaging capabilities you've come to expect. It's supported on BlackBerry Internet Service, giving you access to up to 10 work or personal email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts), as well as BlackBerry Enterprise Server, enabling advanced security and IT administration within IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise environments.

Phone Features
The Curve 8330 is fashioned with subtly curving corners and chrome highlights. Measuring 4.2 x 2.4 inches, the Curve is just as slim as the Pearl (0.63 inches) and weighs in at 4 ounces. It features a bright 2.5-inch color TFT screen that provides 65,000 colors and a 320 x 240-pixel resolution, and it includes a light-sensing feature that automatically adjusts backlighting for indoor, outdoor and dark environments. Like the BlackBerry 8800, the Curve includes a trackball navigation system located on the top of the QWERTY keypad, and it also features an integrated spell checker with a customizable dictionary to help maintain accuracy while on the go. It has 96 MB of internal ROM memory, and is expandable using MicroSD/MicroSDHC memory cards (up to 8 GB in size).

The 2-megapixel camera makes it easy to capture pictures to send via email or upload to your online photo collection.

You can snap vivid photos (though no video) using the 2-megapixel camera on the back of the Curve, which also features a 5x digital zoom, built-in flash, self-portrait mirror and full screen viewfinder. It can capture images in up to three picture quality and size resolutions that can be shared instantly by email, MMS or BlackBerry Messenger, or even uploaded to your Flickr account with the Yahoo! Go service. Photos can also be immediately set as a unique caller ID or Home Screen image. You can edit photos and create albums within the Curve using the PhotoSuite application. Pictures can be cropped, rotated and straightened, and flaws can be fixed by removing redeye or changing the brightness, contrast, and saturation levels.

Listen to your favorite music and watch downloaded videos using the included stereo headset, or use an optional wireless headphone thanks to the Curve's support for the Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP/AVRCP). The Curve is compatible with MP3 and WMA audio files, and dedicated volume controls are conveniently located on the side of the handset.

With the Voice-Activated Dialing (VAD) feature, you can initiate a call just by telling the Curve who to call from your contact list--either via the integrated speakerphone or using an optional Bluetooth wireless headset. Other advanced phone features include advanced sound technology that cancels out background noise and echo, dedicated volume and mute keys, and the ability to customize the Curve with polyphonic and MP3 ringtones.

The BlackBerry Maps application enables you to view maps and driving directions as well as email maps to other BlackBerry users and launch maps from your address book. It also includes a local search capability that allows users to find local businesses, such as banks, hotels and restaurants, within a short driving distance.

Vital Statistics
The BlackBerry Curve 8330 weighs 4 ounces and measures 4.2 x 2.4 x 0.63 inches. Its 1150 mAh lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 5.9 hours of talk time, and up to 264 hours (11 days) of digital standby time. It runs on the 800/1900 CDMA/EV-DO frequencies.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Smartphone!!!
I have had my Blackberry Curve (Red) from Sprint for three weeks now and I have been quite happy with the device so far with only one or two quibbles.

Pros:
Incredible battery life
Very stable operating system
Excellent messaging capabilities
3.5mm standard headphone jack
Easily customized via third party theme packs
Very light compared to the weight of other smartphones

Cons:
Keys could stand to be a bit larger
Finger print magnet
Trackball navigation takes a little getting used to
Long startup times. Very long!
Low screen resolution (320X240)
Very poor documentation

At this point I've gotten fairly comfortable navigating around the phone and it's menu system but it wasn't an easy start requiring more than a little trial and error along with a lot of online reading. However, now that I've gotten the basics down pat as well as some more advanced feature use under my belt I have to say I now see the allure of the Blackberry platform! It just "Works"!

Blackberry's are designed to be left on 24/7 and as such their boot up times make booting up a low end desktop computer running Windows Vista seem fast by comparison. We're talking almost two minutes from pressing the power button (or inserting the battery which turns the device on automatically) to usable phone. Now, with that being said I'd like to take this time to point out I've turned off my phone only twice in three weeks and had to do a reset once (by pulling the battery out for 30 seconds). One of the times I turned the phone off was to restart the device after the installation of some third party themes.

Speaking of themes, there are plenty out there to be found, both free and not free. If you don't like the ones that come stock on the BB Curve 8330 then you won't have a problem finding ones that you do like. One note of interest that I did not find addressed in any documentation that came with the phone is that once you get a theme customized (folders and items moved around) it's only for that theme. You'll have to move everything around again when you switch themes. The upside is that if you switch back to a previous theme you customizations are still there.

One thing I highly recommend to anyone buying this phone is to update the operating system to the new BB OS 4.5. You'll get built in HTML email support and a slightly improved web browser along with MMS support. One problem I ran into was not the fault of RIM though. Do NOT try to update the OS from a PC running Windows 7 Beta! It won't work and you may brick your phone (which can be fixed easily enough so don't panic). The update only works on a Vista or XP machine.

The web browser that comes with the phone is a bit of a mixed bag. It works well enough for me and if you dig into the options you'll see where you can easily switch "modes" to make the browser appear to servers as either the Blackberry Browser, Pocket IE, desktop IE, Open Wave WAP browswer, or desktop Mozilla Firefox browser. Very handy if you want to view the full desktop experience. Again, I did not find any of this in the documentation but through trial and error.

If you get the phone as an upgrade, as I did, then you will have to speak to someone at Sprint to activate the phone. It will not activate online through their ESN switching site. Also, don't forget to head to the Sprint Blackberry Internet Services site to lot in and set up your email accounts, up to ten of them. After you set up the emails (Gmail in my case) you'll also need to send out the service books via the site.

There are lots more things that makes this a very nice smartphone, especially compared to Windows Mobile devices. Just be prepared for a slight learning curve (no pun intended) if you're new to the Blackberry platform. If you are patient and give the platform a chance I think you'll be very happy with this device.

Very nice phone
Loving my Blackberry Curve 8330. I've had a BB 8700g before and liked it very much but this phone blows it and my Palm Centro that I upgraded from right out of the water. I'm quite pleased with the BB Curve 8330. Not for nothing, Sprint's Curve is the best one to have because it has far more features than any other cell phone carriers' Curves. Sprint didn't hold back featurewise. My friends are a bit jealous because of the amount of features my phone has compared to their Curves. Here's the breakdown of what I like and dislike.

Pros:
- Beautiful ruby red color
- Very clear and vivid video and pictures
- Great call quality
- Nice, loud speakerphone
- MP3 sound quality is superb
- Has standard 3.5mm headphone jack which is great. No need to buy those special 2.5mm headphones.
- A USB port
- Snappy bluetooth pairing with my bluetooth headset when with many other phones it seemed like it took forever for the two devices to find each other
- Expandable to 16GB with 4.5 OS
- Speedy email retrieval
- Camera and video camera is pretty good especially outdoors but the indoor photos are not too shabby
- Decent battery life
- Trackball makes for easy navigating
- 96MB of internal ROM memory which is a nice amount of storage and I'm able to fit a lot of third party software with room to spare
- A lot of awesome features and apps that came with the phone plus plenty you can download
- Nice rendering of doc, pdf and ppt files

Honorable mention: The Sprint GPS TelNav(which I thought I didn't need)on this phone rocks. It really can go toe to toe as far as navigation with my Garmin GPS plus it finds signals a lot quicker than my Garmin. I've used it while driving and while walking and it has been on point with fantastic accuracy.

Cons:
- Internet videos, particularly YouTube, displays very small and doesn't take up the whole screen and there's no way to make it full screen like I was able to with my Palm Centro
- Video camera does not shoot videos using the whole 320x240 screen. It only takes the videos at 240x176. Therefore the videos you shoot never take up the whole screen.
- The browser could be a bit faster
- Hangs and freezes on some websites
- Rebooting is way too slow
- Wish the camera had more features
- Voice dialing is bad and doesn't register spoken names very well. Luckily I use another app to handle that.

All and all...this is a very nice phone.

Simply Everything.
There are a few phones I will compare this phone with to prove to you that it is the best phone out there in the market. Since this is a Sprint phone, I won't bother with phones other carriers carry because I am a Sprint user. Sprint has the HTC Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, Treo Pro, Palm Centro, Samsung Instinct and the Blackberry Pearl.

The Curve is an improvement over the Pearl because it has a better trackball in the center which doesn't fall out after a few months of use. The keyboard is a full fledged QWERTY. Now, I haven't used the other curves but there is something annoying about the way the icons are displayed. The Sprint curve however seems to have a better icon/font display. While the Curve does not have windows like the HTC twins and Treo, the blackberry comes with it's own software which is much faster, has an efficient battery life and is very fast and easy to customize with every possible feature.

Remarkable Features - The call quality on this phone is superb. Sprint's coverage is so good, I live in New York and I've traveled to Las Vegas with this phone and I must say the roaming was an awesome experience. When you compare this phone to Samsung Instinct, HTC and the Palms, you will find a much better coverage and I must admit sometimes I have to decrease the volume cause people can be so loud. My previous phone was a Sony Ericsson and I must admit the volume is approximately 225% as loud.

Another great feature is how you can set up your email, you can have a whole mailbox dedicated to a certain email address and the same can have over ten thousand emails. I didn't try more you see. For texts and missed calls, blackberry's log is almost untouchable and there is no phone in it's league, SERIOUSLY. While the windows phones have internet explorer, I find that the blackberry browser is faster and i love the mobile layout for the phone. So internet and texting experience is a breeze and I can be so fast on the phone.

Sometimes my laptop is kept right around but I just can't be bothered. I can write long emails and I am one of those people who hate abbreviations so the blackberry really is the phone for me because I can type so freely. And oh, it was never easier to dial numbers on the phone. I don't use voice dialling. I simply punch in the name using the name of the person using the QWERTY keyboard and it gives me the best matches instantly. Other than that, the blackberry messenger is absolutely outstanding. It is so easy to send small pic files, it auto compresses them into 7kb files. I speak to friends overseas and we prefer this over using gtalk. If you use yahoo or gtalk or even the great AIM, this phone comes with all that.

Sprint has this phone available for a singe user (individual) for a minimum of 69.99 per month for 450 minutes. This includes unlimited data, unlimited text messages, unlimited internet browsing, GPS navigation, Sprint TV, Radio and some other features. This really is a fantastic option and far better than what the other carriers offer. You can also set up google maps on this which when I travelled to Baltimore I discovered was outstanding.

Accessories/Features - The phone comes with a little leather case that has a magnet to keypad lock your phone, otherwise you can use the standby button on the head and put the phone into a battery saving mode where it wont be disturbed unless you're getting a call. It comes with 1gb worth of data on a microsd card, which is expandable up to 8gb I believe. A earphone set without noise cancellation. Also an important USB cable, software to back up your data and numbers.

Unlike a lot of non-techies would think this is not a business phone or a phone which is dedicated to people who have nothing but boredom on their mind. This phone can be used by anyone from the age of 18 to 60. It is easy to use. Far better than the Samsungs, LGs, Sanyos, HTCs...

The one thing I dislike about the blacberry is the camera. It comes with a flash but it really falls flat on it's face if you compare it to the iphone or any mediocre sony ericsson camera.


An accessory that is not included but is a must have is the black rubber skin for the phone. It can cost up to $20 but it's worth the whole shebang. It so happens that this might need changing every few months depending on how miserly you are, I am one of those people who choose quality over price. I don't mind paying anything for a phone, anything reasonable and I would stick with the Blacberry over any other phone.

An irritating thing about the blackberry is how it sometimes takes forever to start up. Sometimes it seems the power is never fully turned off. I still haven't figured that out. WHEN YOUR BATTERY IS LOW, the phone automatically switches the radio off because it is so annoying when your phone turns off on it's own. The 8330 never does that. It may take upto twenty minutes of charging to use the radio to make outgoing calls again. It takes a long time to charge sometimes. I don't drive but I know it uses a USB charger / V3.

It is lovely to hold and well built. Get this with insurance because people love stealing this phone. I've had my phone stolen once so I learned my lesson. Another impressive feature is the 3.5 mm jack. The speaker is average and the voice recording can sometimes be fun though I do it when I want to sing and think im singing well. MP3 songs can be set as ring tones.

Overall, this is the best phone I have ever used with an average camera. But the phone itself is so good, I stop caring about the camera which by the way comes with a flash. I love my blacberry and am transformed for good. A two day battery life you will love, a good mp3 player back up when your ipod is not around, 1000 applications for this phone, excellent Sprint service. A must have for anyone who wants to keep abreast with technology. So much better looking too.

I didn't mention anything about bluetooth because every single phones comes with a bluetooth. If you're getting this phone and don't have a skin for it, I must say you're not very bright.