BlackBerry Curve 9360

Editor's Review of the Curve 9360

The Curve 9360 is the sequel to last year's BlackBerry Curve 3G - one of the best-selling smartphones of 2010. Like its brother, the 9360 is aimed directly at the younger market, thanks to its portrait QWERTY keypad and Instant Messaging smarts, but can BlackBerry still manage to hold its own against the incoming wave of budget Android smartphones?

Design & Build

We were surprisingly impressed with the design of RIM's latest BlackBerry Curve. It may lack the pizazz of the Bold 9900, but its rounded corners and metallic edges make it one of the best-looking - and dare we say 'cutest' - BlackBerry handsets to date. It also measures in at a svelte 11mm thick, making this the perfect choice for skinny-jeaned teenagers

We're not so impressed with its display, however. Despite Blackberry 7's support for 'fluid touchscreen navigation' - and despite the fact that we're in 2011 - the Curve 9360 forgoes a touchscreen. Instead, it touts a not-so-great 2.44-inch (480 x 360) non-touch display, and you're left fumbling with the trackpad for onscreen navigation.

Naturally, there's a portrait QWERTY onboard too, which lets you fire off BBM messages - assuming the service is working - at lightening speed. This is one of the handset's selling points, and we struggled to find fault with the finger-friendly keys.

OS & Interface

It may not be as highly-specced as the Bold 9900 or Torch 9810, but the 9360 runs on BlackBerry 7, the latest version of RIM's home-grown OS. While its much-slicker and prettier than previous versions of BlackBerry OS, we can't help but think that the platform's still lacking - due to its lack of apps and complicated layout. While it'll no-doubt please the BlackBerry-faithful, previous iOS and Android users may not have such high-praise.

Still, BlackBerry 7 does offer-up some pretty neat features. Chief amongst these is BlackBerry Messenger 6 - which enables you to chat with friends while playing a game - and a brand-new WebKit browser, which finally brings decent web surfing to the BlackBerry Curve line-up.

Multimedia & Storage

On the rear of the Curve 9360, you're greeted by a 5 megapixel EDOF camera, paired with a single LED flash. As you've probably guessed, the camera's lack of autofocus makes some photos look washed out and dull, and shots are often filled with graininess and noise. Saying that, the LED flash provides ample light, but the shooter is still by no means on par with that of its BlackBerry 7 siblings.

The camera is also capable of capturing video at VGA resolution, which much like our photos, is by no means as detailed at we would have liked. Still, the footage came-out smooth and good enough for Facebook, with the handset also delivering clear audio recording.

There's plenty of room for all your snapshots, too. The handset may arrive with a mere 512 MB of storage available, but this can be expanded to 32GB via microSD.

Everything Else

It may be billed as a 'budget' handset, but the Curve 9360 packs both HSDPA and WiFi connectivity. Paired with the brand-new browser, the smartphone delivers an excellent web experience, although we would have much preferred a bit more screen space.

We were wowed by the Curve 9360's excellent battery life, too, as we were able to get 2 whole days of heavy usage on a single charge.

Conclusion

The BlackBerry Curve 9360 will undoubtedly be a popular device amongst text-heavy youths and first-time BlackBerry users, but it'll struggle to appeal to busy professionals. Still, that's not what RIM aimed to do with this cheap-and-cheerful handset, and it offers a decent-enough spec sheet to follow in the footsteps of the Curve 3G.