Customer Reviews

BlackBerry Curve 8330 Phone, Red (Sprint)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have been a Sprint customer since 2001. I have always felt they had great service and good coverage. For four years I have been using a Palm Treo (650 and then 700wx) and experienced the phone locking up on a regular basis requiring me to remove the battery. My colleagues were getting great results with Blackberry so I switched to the Blackberry Curve 8330 with Sprint. I immediately noticed a couple of negative features that have overshadowed the positives of this phone and Sprint.

The quality of voice calls is no where near as clear as the Treo. With the Treo I had people constantly tell me that I sounded like I was in the room with them speaking. I could also hear crystal clear on all my calls. The Blackberry has a muffled sound on voice calls both for incoming calls that I hear and how I sound going out. This has caused me to constantly ask people to repeat themselves in some cases two or three times.

The second major negative that became apparent immediately is that on the Sprint network, from my home office where I used to get great service from the Treo, my Blackberry could not get a good signal. For three months I have been dropping business calls daily from my home office simply by switching from a Treo to a Blackberry on Sprint. According to Sprint I am in a 'Fair to Great' service area but DAILY my calls are dropped because of the Blackberry.

I have had the phone tested to ensure it is working properly, I have had a free AirRave device sent for home office use, I have taken all the steps possible to stop dropping calls. Sprint finally has agreed to let me out of my contract with no penalty even though I did not ask for this. I just want a phone that will work without dropping calls. I have subsequently realized that all my colleagues who recommended the Blackberry are either with Verizon or AT&T.

The phone works excellent for everything that I needed it to do with the exception of voice calls. All the features in the world cannot compensate for the most basic function of performing great as a phone.

Me and My Hon, as always have this particular BlackBerry Phone. it is the 7th phone that we swapped during the Year 2008, started out with the Old Reliable Motorolla Razr.
to me a phone is just a phone, as long as I can call, and receive calls on it, I don't really care for the brand or functionality. My Hon, on the other hand, likes to have the latest and the best available unit, and I don't envy her one bit... the only thing is that it has to be a COUPLE, both of us match.

As for the unit itself, it has so many options that one can write books about it (has actually been done). i personally like the unit especially due to the NET capabilities. Long have I been forced to rely on other units for accessing the Net while walking down the street, sometimes 3 or 4 at the same time, accessing seperate parts. with the Blackberry curve, i don't have to any longer, as i can do it all from one unit. admittedly, it is not that easy to find programs that will work with the BlackBerry, compared to the Windows Mobile, but it is not that essential that it cant be overlooked.

the unit itself has one major plus point compared to my PPC, and that is the Battery Life... absolute OUTSTANDING ... sometimes I dont have to put into charge for days, and thats despite Me and My Hon communicated via YAM constantly. the bluetooth does have a habit of draining the battery thou, even if not used... but it is not that big of a deal that it cant be overlooked.

the Keypad and Scroller is easy to use, a bit practice and you are all set to go. i had actually typed in a whole 50 pages Book on my blackberry, and No typos worth mentioning. the Display is beautiful too. that I can actually log in and watch TV show on the phone kind of tells how good the display is.

there is one drawback with the unit, and thats with all open faced phones, the problem of scratching surface and screen... i recommend that you acquire a silicon skin for the body and a screen protector for the screen. so if it gets scratched, you just change the film and not the entire unit.

I am a very high tech digital girl, I go through about two to three cell phones a year due to the fact that I bore of them after constant daily use of them. Prior to the blackberry curve I owned a Palm Centro, in pink.. Wonderful phone by the way.. loved the touch screen. ANYWAY* Sprint offers this amazing unlimited everything plan for 99$ ( awesome deal! ) I upgraded to the Blackberry curve recently.. I will list the pros and cons.

Pros:
Beautiful, bright, large wide and clear screen
QWERTY Keyboard ( gosh I love texting, I cant use a normal cell to text on anymore after being spoiled with the qwerty keyboard)
Camera
Video Camera
Flash
Small and compact size
Comes with leather case
Email Enabled
Comes with YAHOO
Has Pocket Express
Cheap Simply everything plan for 99.99 with sprint
Can Download AIm, MSN, flicker and a few other programs from blackberry.com


Cons:
1.) no place to hang a cell phone charm from :(
( I felt a strange, slight withdrawal from the lack of a cellular charm. made me feel a little mental hahaha IT REALLY BOTHERED ME FOR ABOUT A WEEK, I had to find what to do with my old charms, I then just attached them to my key chain... )
2.)Every time I restart my phone, my theme defaults back to the original.



Anyway I wish it came in pink for sprint :(
And as of now sprint doesn't support sending photos through text messages but you can receive them. Rumors on the internet do state that once they upgrade the operating system on the blackberry for sprint they will then have the feature to sent photos through text.. So I am waiting for that and hoping it happens some time around the new year

Over all... im am about 80% happy with my Blackberry curve


UPDATE EDIT: Sprint upgraded the blackberry OS, and you can now send photo text.
( this makes me happy, I think I will go on a photo sending rampage now!!)

I just switched from a Palm PDA phone (Centro 690) to Blackberry and I am thrilled. I have owned Palms for 10 years or so and was quite comfortable with them. Now I am wondering how I stayed with them for so long. The Blackberry is very sleek looking, (the red is wonderful) and it is responsive, has great call quality, and navigates the web nicely. I am happy!

The "BlackBerry Curve 8330" is my 5th BlackBerry upgrade, and by far the best! The list of features is simply outstanding (incuding Broadband Teathering), includes a very usable keyboard, and has an amazing battery life (a lot better than earlier models - 3 days without charging).

The 8330 performs very well as with my company email and even allows PDF and MS Office document support (read only). The built in web browsing is also very usable.

The built in camera (with flash) and video ability are fairly good.

This is finally the BlackBerry I have always wanted - Highly Recommended!

I've had this phone for 4 months now and I believe I've had it long enough to write a review. First off, let me just say that I found a way not to pay for any web services because I don't use them, so this review will not be for the internet, BBM, or applications (which may be why I have not had any problems).

The mp3 player is very easy to use, and it has an extremely useful search feature: when you just go into your music and you start typing, it will automatically search for you. I have also recently found that, if you hold the "volume up" button on the right side of the phone for about 3 seconds, it will go to the next song, and if you hold the "volume down", it will go to the last song (once again, very useful). The speakers on the phone get a little blurry when at full volume, but then again, what phone doesn't? It is also very convenient that the phone accepts normal 3.5mm headphones, so you can just plug your iPod headphones or any other standard headphones into the jack and listen to your music, and the same if you have headphones with a microphone.

The user interface is very nice and easy to use, and the best thing I have found about this phone is that it DOES NOT FREEZE. This is a HUGE deal for me since my last phone used to freeze practically every time I went to the mp3 player. However, on my Blackberry, I play Brickbreaker while having music play on the speakers and it works seamlessly (there is a little bit of a lag when the song changes, but it's not too big of a deal).

The thing I like most about this phone is how text messaging shows up. It puts all of your conversations in one thread (similar to the iPhone) so that you don't have to keep going between messages to find something you said to your friend, or vice versa.

It also has a decent camera with flash and zoom. The camera is not as clear as the iPhone's camera, but I'm very satisfied with it because I take a lot of pictures at night when flash is absolutely necessary. I'm not sure why the review says it does not have a video camera, because the phone actually does have a decent video camera that I have used at least 10 times so far.

Also, battery life is AMAZING. As I said before, I play a lot of music and Brickbreaker on my Blackberry, but I only need to charge it every few days.

The keys are a bit small to type with sometimes, but I have adapted and I put up with it because the small keys are what lets the phone be so small.

I have also dropped this phone many times and it is still LIKE NEW. However, I would recommend buying a silicone case for it (you can find them for as low as $5) to protect it.

I've been a T-mobile customer for over two years. I finally decided that it was time to let them go when my contract end & I promise I won't look back. I was gonna get a Blackberry curve with them, but I thought about the horrible reception & service I would have to deal with for another year or two. So I went to Sprint & I haven't regretted it. I've been a sidekick user that's all I've owned so a blackberry is a major upgrade for me. I got my phone yesterday & I am in love with it! It has everything for a person who's on the go, a business person, a college person (like myself). I love all their features & what Sprint has to offer. I feel if I would have purchased a curve from T-Mobile I wouldn't have been as happy. I'm still playing around with it & getting adjusted to it. Even tho ill be paying more money being with Sprint I feel its worth it. You won't regret buying this phone.