BlackBerry Curve 9320

Editor's Review of the Curve 9320

RIM have fallen a long way behind in the smartphone race. While they may be preparing a new flagship device to run with Blackberry OS 10 by the end of the year, many are sceptical that it'll be able to compete with the high-end phones from rival makers.

One thing they can rely on though, is that people like their budget phones. QWERTY keyboards and fast internet browsing suffice for many people, and that's just what the Blackberry Curve 9320 offers.

Design & Build

The design of the Curve is, as you can imagine, moderately curvey and fairly chunky. It's a phone that privileges functionality over stylishness, and it's fairly stumpy at 12.7mm of thickness.

The most noteworthy addition to the phone's actual design is the dedicated BBM button on its left-hand side, which takes you straight to the instant messaging service that remains Blackberry's main selling point.

The 2.44" 320 x 240 px display probably won't blow your mind, but this is a budget, non-touchscreen phone we're talking about. The image quality when browsing websites isn't great either though, with the screen seemingly struggling with anything of photographic quality. But hey, at least you can read the fonts when using your beloved BBM, which is the most likely reason why people would buy this phone.

OS & Performance

It's nice to see a budget phone coming with the latest version of its respective OS. In this case, the OS is Blackberry 7.1. Aside from all the usual features you get with Blackberry 7, it also allows for the seamless integration of BBM with Facebook and other social networking apps.

Having only the option of a QWERTY keyboard to use your phone feels a bit limited in this day and age, with the mouse used for web browsing feeling a bit like you're working within the lines of the Grid in Tron - all 8-way movement rather than 360-degree.

That being said, everything on the phone runs completely smoothly. Web pages load quickly and apps experience few bugs. It's just a shame that you can't run anything remotely as exciting on this thing as you can on even a low-end Android phone.

Camera & Multimedia

It's becoming a frustrating tendency with Blackberries that the camera just has to be utterly impotent. The most that can be said about the 3.2MP offering here is that it includes flash (woop-di-doo). The less said about the ominously grainy video quality, the better.

Battery life, connectivity and storage

While the Curve 9320 may lag behind other budget smartphones in terms of raw power, its battery life is indisputably king. The 1450mAh battery will give you a good several days intensive use out of it. You can't say that about your HTC One X or Galaxy S3, can you?

Featured here are all the usual suspects when it comes to connectivity, with no frills attached. Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and HSDPA with download speeds of up to 7.2Mbps.

The limited 512MB internal memory is neatly offset by up to 32GB of microSD storage. Considering that you won't be downloading the latest Tegra 3-powered games for this phone anyway - or any Blackberry for that matter - then this capacity should be more than enough for the kind of apps you can expect to be downloading.

Conclusion

The Curve 9320 may not have all the frills and excitement of a budget Android or even Windows Phone handset, but it fulfils its functions with no problems. Web browsing is quick, BBM is more accessible than ever with the new dedicated button, and you can now listen to the radio using the integrated radio.

But when you look at the small, pixellated screen, the hapless camera and the old-fashioned rather than old-school design, the Curve 9320 just isn't the kind of phone to get excited about. If you're a BB loyalist or BBM addict on a budget, then the Curve 9320 will meet your needs, but there are better budget handsets out there (check out our list of Top 10 Budget smartphones to get an idea).