Gadgetory

on the brink of a new era of blackberry we felt it would be fitting to pay tribute to one of its most popular and successful smartphones of all time I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is a throwback review of the blackberry curve 83 30 in 2007 BlackBerry OS was a serious heavyweight and its creator research emotion was a thriving successful company at the time rim was valued at over 100 billion dollars and it seemed as if nothing could slow it down fast-forward five years and the story is not quite as cheery as it once was now called blackberry the company has spent the better part of the last half decade in front of a drawing board in an attempt to become relevant in the consumer space once again the BlackBerry PlayBook qnx library 10 software and related hardware such as the z10 and q10 have all effectively failed to do the job and earlier this week two little surprised the company announced some major news it's retreating from the consumer market and has agreed to go private thanks to a 4.7 billion dollar offer from Fairfax Financial Holdings the last few years have been quite bumpy and Blackberry as we know it will never be the same so we thought it would be fitting to pay homage to the better days of blackberry with a throwback to one of the company's most successful and popular devices it was May 1st 2008 and Alltel was the first u.s. carrier to receive the latest BlackBerry model the curved 83 30 CDMA variant of the already popular 8300 series for its time the 80 330 was a tiny device that packed a serious punch it was an obvious push into the general consumer market from research emotion which had primarily resided in the enterprise and prosumer markets leading up to the curve in pearl series the curve 83 30 specifically was a breadwinner for RIM in the consumer market the Pearl with its 20 button smart tight keyboard was admittedly a bit strange and the bold still carried that business professional look not everyone wanted the curve was much more casual and in comparison to his Windows Mobile counterparts it was also a lot smaller and it was very lightweight at only 113 grams which can be attributed to the all-plastic build in 2008 the curve was a marvel its outer edges were coated in a soft touch plastic the front and back were gunmetal grey at least on the original mAh Oh silver red pink as well as many other colors followed for various carriers and brands including an all-black variant for Boost Mobile the fixed focus camera also found around back only offered a max resolution of two megapixels which never took the greatest pictures but it did have an LED flash as well as a tiny mirror for self shots the front was a beautiful mess of buttons 40 to be exact directly below the 2.5 inch 320 by 240 pixel resolution display rested dedicated call and end buttons the standard BlackBerry key which doubled as a Menu key within apps a back button and a trackball for navigation anyone who used a trackball fitted blackberry shared mostly the same sentiments it was a love-hate relationship the trackball was an incredibly accurate way to navigate it was nimble and easy to use but dust would often get under the track bolt and prevent it from rolling fortunately it was an easy fix pop the plastic housing off and clean the area out with a q-tip this also made swapping out custom colored track balls very easy below the navigation keys was the high point of the phone the full quarter keyboard the island keys were separated just enough for comfortable blind navigation and they were perfectly rigid though the travel of the keys was very short even to this day after two and a half years of use and another three spent in a drawer the keys still provide a firm tactile and audible click which came in handy when typing notes during my high school physics class instead of hand writing them yes that's right I said high school by today's standard this phone is too small ugly fat and nearly useless its specifications are laughable it came with only 32 megabytes of RAM and 96 megabytes of internal storage which could be supplemented with a microSD card its processor clocked in at 312 megahertz and was very slow and his battery capacity was rated at 1,150 milliamp hours there was no Wi-Fi on board though there was a GPS radio and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity it operated on a video yet thanks to the mandatory $30 monthly price for the BlackBerry internet service which was unlimited might we add compressed webpages literally took minutes to load and that gets us to software it wasn't much to look at the home screen consisted of four different layouts which were accessible from the themes submenu in settings all were a little more than different icon layouts though the today view gave a preview of messages missed calls and calendar entries and if you were inclined to do so you can create your own blackberry themes or download custom themes from various sources I created a few of my own one of which can be seen here the Settings app was literally a text list with no design elements whatsoever staring at it today after being spoon-fed with visual cues and beautiful interface design for several years almost makes us dizzy the high point of the BlackBerry software however was the email and the universal inbox blackberry internet service orb is delivered its famous push email mere seconds after an email was sent it was an unbelievably reliable and efficient way to do email especially in 2008 and the inbox not terribly unlike androids notification shade makes third-party notifications email SMS bbm and everything else into a single chronological stream of info it was beautiful and no software not even today's BlackBerry hub quite captures the same utility as the old Blackberry inbox blackberry was all about productivity no matter how much RIM wanted it to be consumer based software the interface was heavily engineered to adhere to the use it and put it back in your pocket mantra how blackberries were originally designed to be hues but the terms BlackBerry addict and CrackBerry have very obvious origins you had to rely on the mobile web for everything and a few built-in apps to do your bidding it wasn't until later in 2009 that BlackBerry OS actually had a dedicated application store it launched April 1st 2009 and it was called blackberry app world before that one had to dig around various forums to find third-party applications for their blackberry looking back the software is very rudimentary but in 2008 it got the job done and it did so with flying colors I personally remember spending hours playing games writing school papers emailing taking notes and browsing the web for my curve while my friends and family still had flip phones best of all I was doing this for days on end on a single charge I specifically remember only charging my phone two or three times per week logging several hours of usage each day on all tell the curve 83 30 calls 329 dollars with a two year agreement which was quite steep even by today's standards but make no mistake this was a very important device in the transformation of the smartphone world even if the iPhone gets most the credit even to this day the curve 83 30 has a special place in our hearts and from it's like a trophy on my shelf the phone that got me into this business and kick-started my love for technology that's going to do it folks for this video if you enjoyed it let us know by clicking the thumbs up button below and hit the subscribe button to see more videos like this one you can find us on Twitter Facebook and Google+ at PocketNow I'm Taylor Martin and you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time