Gadgetory

everybody loves hot curves and in the phone world that same rule applies I'm Bryant on from cnet com and today we've got the light shining bright on the rim blackberry curve 8310 from eighty people talk iphone all the time but if you haven't noticed it's really blackberries that rule the world today we're looking at the curve and it's one of the most popular and rims line combining a full qwerty keyboard in a sleek and smooth design this quadband phone is uber comfortable to hold and the rubbery sides make it easy to grip it also has that famed trackball that makes using the device a pleasant experience so let's talk features specifically for the 8310 model that's on AT&T service the biggest goodie that separates this guy from the other curve is the addition of GPS it uses the TeleNav gps service with color maps and real text to voice direction now that's huge because you can pay attention to the road without looking down at the phone there is a ten dollar monthly cost for unlimited use but for people on the go it's well worth it now outside of GPS goodness the curve is one of the best if not the best messaging smartphones on the market it's compatible with blackberry enterprise servers and supports Microsoft Exchange IBM lotus domino or Novell GroupWise for corporate email in real time you'll also get pop or IMAP email support for up to as many as 10 email accounts pretty much every popular document is viewable through the email client and you have text messaging multimedia messages and instant messaging it's a messaging machine the 8310 is loaded with a 2 megapixel camera which holds its own against other smart phones Bluetooth a 3.5 millimeter jack to use your own headphones and pretty good call quality now battery life was rated at four hours but our labs pushed it out to five and more is always better so what are we missing in the curve well this model has a great GPS package but there's a trade-off because there's no Wi-Fi t-mobile's 8320 model is loaded with Wi-Fi but there's no GPS so in a perfect world we'd to them there's also no 3G support so we're left with little edge 3g is where it's at and we're still waiting and the web browser is also pretty dated especially compared to Safari on the iPhone the 8310 has instant messaging but you're limited to using blackberry zone messaging service now t-mobile's version allows you to chat with all the big time clients like aim yahoo and windows live messenger now this is still a great phone but we wanted to point out some of the differences between the AT&T and t-mobile version there are still places to improve and we can't wait for the next generation blackberry curve but it's still currently the most popular smartphone on the planet and it knows what it does best messaging messaging and more messaging I'm Brian song for cnet com and this blackberry smartphone continues to stay ahead of the curve