Here comes another item I purchased on a whim trying to fill a need. There are a lot of so-called “extended” batteries out there for the iPhone 3G. I was running into issues with my iPhone’s battery being almost dead after only a few hours of heavy use. I decided to research this for use on one of my vacations, since that seems to be the time when you are away from consistent power the most.

My search ended at the Kensington Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPhone and iPod. This product retails at around $50, but can be found on amazon.com for around $35. It is a very compact, lightweight battery that can be plugged into the dock port on an iPhone or iPod for some extra juice.

There are other batteries on the market, namely the Richard Solo 1800, which gets consistently high ratings. But my problem with that battery is the cost (typically double the price of this one) and the fact that it’s so bulky on the phone. This battery can be attached to your iPhone and you can still talk on it without looking totally foolish. That’s a good feature in my opinion.

The manufacturer of the product, Kensington, claims that this device extends play time up to 30 hours of music or 6 hours of video (on iPod nano 3G) or 3 hours of talk (on iPhone). I never really have scientifically tested these claims, as my purpose for buying this wasn’t to extend my talk time on my iPhone, it was more to be able to keep using it as an internet browsing tablet for long after the regular battery dies, and for that this accomplishes the task well. The Kensington battery charged my iPhone 3G from nearly dead to 70% charge within a short amount of time. That’s a decent amount of extra juice to work with, and totally worth the money to have an emergency battery such as this around.

The packaging is sparse, but includes a retractable USB charging cable (it uses the standard “mini” USB connection) and can be charged off any standard USB port. It also includes a cover for the battery connector, which doubles as a sort of stand you can use to keep your iPhone or iPod Touch standing up to watch movies. I have yet to bother trying this, but it’s a neat little touch.

Overall, this is the best battery for the iPhone 3G I could find that is also portable and cheap. I’ve been using mine for a few months now, and I’d highly recommend it if you’re looking for a spare emergency battery solution that isn’t gigantic and has a decent amount of juice to recharge your iPhone with.

I knew this was going to happen. Research In Motion (the makers of the BlackBerry series of smart phones) finally made a product that didn’t live up to my expectations.

I’ll tell you more in detail below, but first a bit of history: At my 9-to-5 job it is one of my roles to manage a BlackBerry server and 50-odd BlackBerry phones, so I’ve used every model of BlackBerry available in the US for the most part in some capacity or another.

Currently, I have a Verizon BlackBerry Curve at the office. My current home cell phone is an iPhone 3G. I asked our corporate Verizon representative to send me a demo of the Storm, because I’ve had a lot of BlackBerry users at work asking me when we were getting them (due to the media saturation of the commercials and the general coolness factor of how the phone looks). So I felt it was my duty to get one in for review so I could make an educated decision about recommending this thing to upper management and other people who may be interested in it.

A lot has been said about this phone in reviews by other technology journalists on the web (David Pogue of the New York Times for instance, and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal), some positive, some negative. I used the phone for a solid 4 days of testing and one software upgrade (to try to fix an issue, more later on that) before deciding to write this.

I’ll go over some key items about the phone in a few sections, the stuff that’s important to me as a consumer. Things that have been in BlackBerry OS forever (such as push email, calendar sync, etc) are really not that noteworthy to me, and I won’t talk much about those. I can, and will compare this phone to the iPhone 3G though, simply because RIM was definitely aiming right at Apple when designing this, I have no doubts about that.

Phone Design

The BlackBerry Storm is a slick looking phone — which elicits the expected reaction from nearly everyone you show it to. It is very heavy feeling, about the same weight as the iPhone 3G. I would say it feels solid, but then you press down on the touchscreen itself (since it is one large button), and it wobbles and leaks light in from behind the screen. It is not the most comfortable phone to hold, but then again I don’t think the iPhone wins in that category, either. Both of them could benefit from the rubberized grip of the BlackBerry Curve (or other phones that actually seem like they’re designed to be held).

Underneath the black aluminum battery cover (yes, unlike the iPhone the battery can be removed – score 1 for RIM), there is a removable 8GB MicroSDHC card, which is a great thing for them to provide. The last generation of BlackBerry phones (The Curve and Pearl) include a MicroSD card slot, but they didn’t give you a card with the phones. 8GB is more than enough for a decent amount of media and pictures. It also included a Verizon SIM card (which I think is a placeholder, since Verizon doesn’t sell GSM phone service). I’ve been told that this can be unlocked just as easily as other BlackBerry phones so you can roam the world with it easily (this is another thing the iPhone 3G requires hacking to do.)

RIM abandoned the standard Mini USB port they’ve used for several years for a new “Micro” USB port for charging and connecting the phone to the computer. This means all your old BlackBerry chargers and any wired peripherals won’t work with the new phone. This is kind of a letdown for me as a BlackBerry administrator, simply because we have dozens of perfectly good spare BlackBerry car and home chargers that are now useless if we move to the Storm.

The Screen

The screen is one of the better things this phone has to offer. It has a 3.25″, 480×360 pixel screen, with very easy to read text and a very bright backlight, with a nice glossy sheen to it. I really have no gripes whatsoever with the actual screen in this phone by itself, if I don’t take into account the way or manner information is displayed on it or it’s “click” function. It is better than the iPhone’s screen in both clarity, size, and general readability.

The Accelerometer

This is the first BlackBerry with an accelerometer in the device. Again, another thing I believe RIM decided to copy from the iPhone (even though the iPhone is not the first device to use something like this, it’s the first one to do it right in my opinion.) I found the sensor had major lag issues (even after a software update to the 4.7.0.75 leaked firmware!) with moving from portrait to landscape. Sometimes it took up to 4 seconds for the phone to change back from landscape to portrait with nothing else going on. This is simply unacceptable. It would inadvertently switch screen orientation at random times when it wasn’t necessary to do so, and it confused all the users I gave the phone to. The final straw with the accelerometer is for some reason RIM believes that if you have your phone locked, it should still change orientation from portrait to landscape. I honestly can’t figure out why I’d want my phone sitting there in my pocket switching orientation when it’s locked and not being used. I hope they fix this in a software update.

The Keyboard

The screen being covered in its literal sense, I’ll discuss the biggest part of what makes the Storm the Storm: The keyboard and its role in the UI. RIM decided in the BlackBerry Storm’s development to eschew the traditional BlackBerry keyboard for two different “touch” keyboards. These both are familiar to older users of BlackBerry phones: The “SureType” style in the 7100 series and Pearl (2 letters per key), active while in Portrait orientation, or the QWERTY style (full keyboard), like in the Curve, 8700, and 8800 series, which is active in landscape orientation.

However, the old keyboard layouts work completely differently in the Storm — because they are now part of the touch screen and are activated by “clicking” in the entire screen while your finger is over the corresponding button. The screen acts as one giant button that you press in with every letter press, icon click, or menu selection.

I’ve found typing for any period of time becomes tiresome after only a minute or so, and it seems like way too much work even to just send off a small text message. The auto-correction software (SureType) seems like it isn’t as effective as it was in the BlackBerry Curve, and sometimes the phone simply types letters that I didn’t press, even though it looks like I’m pressing the right one due to the blue “halo” around my finger as I hover over the letters.

The keyboard isn’t completely missing. There are still 4 physical buttons on the front of the phone, which include the typical SEND and END keys, the “Menu” key, and the “Back” key, both of those last two are holdovers from previous BlackBerry incarnations. I’m kind of surprised they couldn’t find some way to integrate these into the touch screen.

If this review was trying to convince me to buy this phone, this keyboard would be the deal breaker. I can’t stand it. People who might peck one or two characters every 5 seconds might not care about how bad this is, but for me, it was infuriating to use it. I can type on my BlackBerry Curve at approximately 30 words a minute. The iPhone 3G? maybe 20-25. This was much, much less than that. I’m extremely disappointed; one of the huge advantages of BlackBerry was their highly efficient keyboard and the “Pearl” (or scroll wheel in the older generations), and that speed and fluidity is completely obliterated with a keyboard UI that just doesn’t work. I had several non-techie users at my office try to type on it who were BlackBerry users, and they either typed incredibly slow or were just confused by the new keyboard.

The Touch Screen, And It’s Role In The User Interface

In general, the touch screen functions are a good effort for a phone if you ignore one thing: the existence of iPhone. Apple clearly invested much, much more time into usability and interface design here than RIM did. A few things about the iPhone that you don’t notice you miss until you use the Storm are the ability to quickly “flick” through lists of items, multi-touch capabilities like pinch gesturing, double-tapping to zoom smoothly into/out of web pages, and smooth scrolling through websites. All of these things are not something the Storm does well (or at all in some cases), and I’m sure I’m missing a lot more here. Maybe its related to patent issues, but the touch screen in the Storm just seems dumber than the iPhone touch screen. That’s about all I can say about it.

Research In Motion has not paid enough attention to the menu UI in regards to making it easy for people to “click” on menu items, either. They are too small for even my (not that large) fingers to consistently press in properly. Making calls from the old UI was simple: Start dialing from the home screen. Now you have to press the SEND button to get to the call area, or click on the call log, which wasn’t immediately apparent to any veteran BlackBerry user I showed it to.

The Apps

As of right now, there’s really little that is new or interesting about the applications bundled with the Storm. VZ Navigator is included, which is a turn-by-turn GPS application that has a lot of good Points of Interest and other neat features. Unfortunately Verizon charges $10/mo for this feature, which is really not worth paying a monthly fee for. There’s not a good turn-by-turn GPS on the iPhone right now, but if it cost $10/mo extra, I wouldn’t buy it anyway.

Refinements to BlackBerry OS 4.7 to make it look very pretty are great, but those were done in OS 4.6 already for the BlackBerry Bold (a far superior phone for people who might actually want to type out an email!). BlackBerry even created some sort of half-baked version of Apple’s App Store, but it simply forwards you to web pages to download applications. Not even close, RIM.

The development happening for iPhone right now is astounding. I’d be surprised if the Storm gets this level of interest, considering there’s already a huge glut of years worth of BlackBerry applications that still work on the Storm. There are a lot of great BlackBerry apps (A shining example is BeeJiveIM, which is also on iPhone), so it’s not all bad but it really doesn’t compare to some of the great stuff on the iPhone right now.

On a positive note, applications on the Storm (or any other BlackBerry) can run in the background, which is one thing about the iPhone that is a frustrating design choice apple made that they play off as a feature to save battery life.

The Web Browser

One of the biggest changes in the 4.7 BlackBerry OS for the Storm is the web browser. The web browser definitely benefits from the much higher screen resolution on this phone, and actually renders real pages in a very readable way. Verizon’s network is extremely fast (but not WiFi fast). The browser simply isn’t up to the level of Mobile Safari on the iPhone/iPod Touch, though. The gestures that are in the iPhone for web browsing are light-years ahead in terms of ease of use than in the BlackBerry browser. This version is a marked improvement over the BlackBerry OS 4.5 browser, though.

The Network

As the commercials state, Verizon’s data network is the fastest out there. Their voice coverage is arguably the best in the nation. The phone does not have Wi-Fi, though, which comes in handy when you’re somewhere that doesn’t have Verizon’s extremely fast Rev. A EVDO. This is the first BlackBerry on Verizon that supports tethering for internet on Rev. A EVDO, the prior ones only supported Rev. 0 (the slower EVDO speed).

Generally speaking, sites and downloads came through very quickly in my tests in my metro area. The phone supports both CDMA (Verizon) network, and GSM networks with a SIM (worldwide with an unlock which is something very easy to do on the BlackBerry and not something you can do on the iPhone without hacks.) This is one of the major advantages of having this phone on Verizon, their network is great. You pay for it, though.

Camera

It’s not all bad news. The camera is 3.2 megapixels, with an auto-focus feature. At this point this is the best camera I have ever used in a cell phone. As a disclaimer I must mention I haven’t used the Nokia N95, which has a 5 megapixel camera in it, or the new N97. The auto-focus feature is main reason I like this camera. Being able to focus on close items (e.g. a piece of paper) and still have the text on the page be sharp is a huge bonus; this is something you simply can’t do with the iPhone 3G’s camera. The camera’s lag time for the shutter and taking photos is brutally slow, especially in low light. The iPhone 3G’s camera has similar issues, though.

Battery Life

The battery life on the Storm seemed to be pretty decent; I don’t have any scientific estimates on how long it lasts under light or heavy use. One of my gripes with the iPhone 3G is you can easily drain the battery to nearly nothing within 3 hours if you use it heavily. I didn’t have anything worth using heavily on my Storm to really drain it, so I’m not a totally fair judge of this, but it seemed that the Storm’s battery life is quite decent, and probably better than the iPhone 3G for general use.

Additionally, having a removable battery is a very nice feature… albeit one I don’t really care much about, since I generally have some type of charger near me, whether it’s in a car, my desk at work, or an outlet at home.

General Impressions / In Closing

So, you’re wondering after reading this, do I recommend the BlackBerry Storm to anyone?

My short answer: No.

My longer answer: The phone isn’t refined enough. It lags doing simple things like orienting the screen and scrolling through the icons (even after their first firmware update), and needs more attention paid to the UI.

For consumers on Verizon who won’t leave (either due to loyalty or the other carriers not having good signal in your area), or corporate customers on Verizon: I’d say to either get a BlackBerry Pearl or Curve, or better yet, wait for Verizon to get the BlackBerry Bold (probably sometime in 2009). You don’t want this touch screen. Skip it. I haven’t personally reviewed the Bold yet, but it seems like it’s inherited all the best UI features from the Storm and a great input interface to use them with.

For consumers who want a cool phone right now and don’t care about what carrier it’s on: Get the iPhone 3G. Right now, overall, it is truly the best smart phone for the largest swath of consumers out there. Its flaws are overcome by an amazing development scene and a very well done user interface.

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Additional media: A short video I made documenting the lag in both the accelerometer interface and scrolling through the main screen’s icons.

So. I’m not the first tech reviewer on the block to do this, but I finally procured myself one of the oft-talked about Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth headsets. The Jawbone is a MSRP $129 Bluetooth headset which has been much-heralded for it’s ability to “shield” your calls from noise.

My first impression of this device was near the release of the iPhone, back in July 2007. A friend of mine who I was traveling around San Francisco with had one of them, and in the car I was driving we had a bit of a challenge. He wanted to test how good the Jawbone’s noise-shielding technology really was. We were driving about 60-70 MPH on the 101 freeway over the hills North of the Golden Gate Bridge. I rolled all the windows down in my rental car, we turned the radio up, and he placed a phone call. He then asked the person on the other end whether he could understand him properly and if it was noisy. The person on the other end said they could only hear his voice, and the distant sound of the radio. I was impressed to say the least, but didn’t get the chance to actually use one myself until now.

In The Box

The Jawbone is a well-built, almost art-like device, the packaging borrows a lot from the book of Apple. Clean box art, clear acrylic plastic, and something that almost looks like it belongs in a museum (the headset) is contained in the box. It also includes 4 different ear loops and 4 different ear bud attachments to try to secure a better fit. It includes two charging cables, one that connects to a computer via USB and another that plugs into an AC outlet, which requires the same USB cord. The device in the box was gloss black, one of three colors.

I found the box almost impossible to get back together properly after opening it, similar to when you buy an iPod. It was an interesting puzzle to try to figure out the proper way to remove the headset from the box without feeling like you were about to break something.

Connection

Being someone who hates reading directions, I tried to figure out how to get the Jawbone into “paring mode” (for non-techies, this is the mode where the headset is open to accept Bluetooth wireless connections from your phone or computer). Since the device itself doesn’t have traditional buttons (they are actually part of the design itself), it works by certain points in the Jawbone’s frame being buttons. I eventually found which of the two buttons I needed to press to get it into pairing mode (and for how long) after that it was quite easy for my BlackBerry Curve to find it.

Using The Headset

Most current generation phones use Bluetooth headsets the same way, and this was no exception, I could initiate a call to the last number dialed by pressing the button on the outside of the Jawbone. I could also pick up or hang up on someone using this same button. The noise shield technology is active on the device automatically but you can disable it if you wish by pressing in a button on the top of the unit.

The Jawbone seemed to have a better signal and less connection issues than two other Bluetooth headsets I’ve tried, a low-end Motorola HS820, and a Jabra BT250. The Jabra especially had signal drop even when the phone was in my pocket or a few feet away. The Jawbone didn’t have this issue.

Comfort/Fit

Even though the Jawbone includes 4 different ear loops and 4 different earbuds, I couldn’t find any combination of these that made the device comfortable for me to wear for more than a few minutes. I wear glasses, and the Jawbone’s earloop kept catching on my glasses and just generally didn’t fit snugly. The Jabra BT250 was definitely more comfortable in that regard.

Sound Quality

Naturally when using a Bluetooth headset it’s easy to make a comparison to the cell phone’s speaker when referencing quality. I was using mine with the T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8320, as mentioned earlier. I found the sound quality through the Jawbone to be very cheap sounding versus the built-in speaker on the phone. This isn’t really anything surprising to me, as I’ve found most Bluetooth headsets, especially ones that don’t fit your ear snugly, to have poor sound (not that a cell phone has great sound quality in general, but there has to be some kind of baseline here).

“Noise Shield” Technology

This is the feature that sets the Jawbone apart from the other Bluetooth headsets I’ve used. In my extremely unscientific testing, I tried calling people while watching noisy TV and listening to noisy music and when asked how it sounded they said they couldn’t hear anything but me, which is great. I think this feature makes up for a lot of other things I mentioned in the review regarding sound quality. I would like to see more scientific data on it, but as far as I’m concerned it works very well.

Battery Life

I didn’t use the Jawbone enough to kill the batteries, but it lasts several days without charging on standby. It’s very convenient to be able to charge it off a computer’s USB port as well.

Summary and Conclusions

How do I feel about this device after using it? Is it worth $129? It depends. If you get an opportunity to try one of these before buying it, you should. My gripe isn’t necessarily with the Jawbone itself, but I’ve found out after using these that I don’t think I’m the target market for them. I find it annoying to have to remember to bring it with me, and to charge it every few days. I have enough trouble remembering to bring my keys and cell phone with me places. I’d rather just use my cell phone’s built-in speaker. Not to mention you (and I) look like a fool walking around in public with one of these.

There are certain scenarios which I like it, and if it’s around I use it. I do laundry on Sundays and use it while ironing my shirts for my 9 to 5 job. It’s nice for that because you can work without having something up to your ear. If you have it in your car, it would also be useful so you could concentrate on driving, but I always forget to bring it with me.

If I was asked to make a recommendation for people who use Bluetooth headsets a lot, I’d have no hesitation to recommend this device, I think it’s the best Bluetooth headset I’ve used overall. It’s a bit expensive, and the fit is a bit iffy on my ear, but it does seem like the creators of the unit spent a lot of time developing it. It oozes quality and attention to detail in design, which is more than I can say about all the crappy Motorola Bluetooth headsets I’ve seen over the years.

Pros:
+ Noise shield technology is unique and works well!
+ Very classy looking design.
+ Easy to charge with two charging options included.

Cons:
- Pretty expensive for a Bluetooth headset.
- May not fit people’s ears with glasses without a lot of effort.

Aliph’s Jawbone website: www.jawbone.com

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I was promising myself I would get around to writing this review and frankly, I should have had it done BEFORE I did the iPhone review, since I still have this phone and the iPhone was returned to the store. Despite the fact that traditionally the BlackBerry platform is thought of as a business phone with email, I think that these two phones should be directly compared. BlackBerry has been moving away from pure business with the release of the 8100 (Pearl) and now the 8300 (Curve) phones, with multimedia functions and cameras. I will write this review on the merits of the BlackBerry and assume the reader (you) knows something about what the BlackBerry platform is and why you should care. I have a pretty comprehensive background with BlackBerry on a corporate level. I manage around 50 BlackBerry devices on a corporate network at my job and work a lot with the less interesting models of BlackBerry (7100t, 7105t, 7130e, 8700g for instance).

I’ll go over the basic functionality any blackberry possesses, and then build on that with information about what the Curve does that other models of BlackBerry don’t do, or don’t do as well. I will also throw in a few tips about very useful 3rd party software you should install that will make your BlackBerry truly useful as a consumer device, and perhaps maybe an iPhone killer… it was for me.

The BlackBerry Curve was released at the beginning of June 2007. At the time of this writing it is an AT&T exclusive device, but rumors on the internet claim a T-Mobile version with Wi-Fi (the 8320) is on the horizon soon. I bought mine without a contract at an AT&T store for $449+tax. Since it is a GSM phone it can be unlocked for use on other GSM carriers that offer a BlackBerry data plan. I am currently a T-Mobile subscriber, so I then paid a service advertised on blackberryforums.com $20 to send me a SIM unlock code and off I went on T-Mobile’s network. I had some difficulty with the web browser not immediately showing up, but found out this is an issue with T-Mobile not having this phone yet, not so much with the phone itself. There were workarounds to get it back which I also found on that forum (it’s a great resource!).

The BlackBerry OS 4.2′s key functions include best-in-class (in my opinion) push email, an address book, a web browser, a calendar, a task list, and lots of configurable user options. A few things the BlackBerry Curve has in it’s OS that most older corporate BlackBerry phones don’t have are the ability to do MP3/WAV ringtones, a media player, and a 2 megapixel camera. The BlackBerry 8100 (Pearl) has similar functionality, only it has the less-useful abbreviated keyboard other BlackBerry models in the 71xx series have, and has a 1.3 megapixel camera.

The preferences/options area of the built-in apps in the phone allow you to get extremely granular with almost every option. Especially complicated (if you want it to be) is the area of the OS related to sound Profiles. You can change so many options here with how you wish the phone to behave when it rings, receives a text message, or many other alert noises, similar to the “Sounds” control panel in Windows. When you install new applications, they add new options here to configure.

Themes are a great way to change the entire look of your device. The Curve includes 3 themes, the AT&T default theme is very nice, but there are several other great ones, including hacked ones from other BlackBerry models on BlackBerryForums.

Most internet functions on the BlackBerry are controlled by BlackBerry Internet Service, otherwise known as BIS. As a consumer, you pay for BIS as part of your BlackBerry data plan. On T-Mobile, BlackBerry unlimited data costs $19.99 a month on top of your included plan minutes. It costs $29.99 on most other phone providers but may be bundled with additional items such as text/picture messaging, which is not included on T-Mobile without paying extra.

Reviewing this device as a consumer, I’ll focus on performance with BIS, not the BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) corporate product, which syncs a lot more of what you do with the device than BIS can.

The BlackBerry Curve 8300 comes in at a very svelte 4.2 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches. It is shorter in height than an iPhone, and the smallest and thinnest BlackBerry with a full keyboard. It looks similar to the BlackBerry Pearl, only it is silver in color and has the wider, QWERTY “Curved” keyboard (hence the name, Curve). The sides of the device are rubberized making it easy to hang on to, which is one thing the iPhone sorely needs. It shares the white, illuminated Trackball with the BlackBerry Pearl and 8800 series. Personally, I think this is the best designed BlackBerry, period.

The screen on the BlackBerry Curve is bright and very sharp. Text is clear and readable. It is not amazingly easy to see in direct sunlight but how many phones really are?

Battery life on the device is better than my Sidekick 3, but not amazing. With heavy use the battery needs a good charge every 2 days or so. On standby when the device is not constantly seeking new wireless towers, the device can go 4 days or more without a recharge. The battery is user-replaceable and cheap. Lots of eBay knockoff batteries available for $1+shipping for this, and it uses the same BlackBerry battery as all the current generation models.

The email software within the BlackBerry is the same across the entire platform. It has some small enhancements in OS 4.2 (which is used by the Curve, Pearl and 88xx series) and adds the ability to email your camera photos and multimedia items to emails as attachments. The integration with the address book here is vital, as you only need to type a few characters of someone’s name to get their information to appear in the fields. You can have an email sent within a few seconds with a 1600×1200 (2 megapixel) photo attached.

This is one current limitation of the iPhone I spoke about in the earlier review, the ability to only send one photo per email and only at 640×480 pixel size, with no EXIF data attached to the image.

There is one feature here that the iPhone wins at over the Curve, which is the ability to render “rich text” email. Currently the BlackBerry only supports plain text email, so any email composed entirely of HTML code with no alternate text version is very difficult to read on the BlackBerry, but most emails come through fine, (and with lightning speed I must add). The email client supports viewing of several popular attachments.

The Curve can handle up to 10 personal email accounts at once. BIS also allows you to create a special BlackBerry email address just for your device. On T-mobile, it takes the form of (name)@tmo.blackberry.net.

After testing the iPhone’s “full” web browser and coming back to my BlackBerry Curve, one one think a person would be a bit disappointed in the rendering of websites, but I really wasn’t. The BlackBerry makes most websites quite usable and many popular websites have specific mobile/blackberry versions that load in a snap on the BlackBerry browser. There is also a 3rd party version of Opera, Opera Mini, if you find you don’t enjoy BlackBerry’s browser. Web browsing speeds on EDGE data are much faster when you’re not loading a full website, but T-Mobile’s EDGE loads a lot of sites at a semi-respectable pace… certainly good enough for mobile browsing.

BlackBerry’s browser supports JavaScript and can browse to secure sites. I’ve used it to order pizza before while I was on the bus ride home from my job, ain’t the internet grand?

BlackBerry browser also supports a neat feature that will go refresh your bookmarks automatically, on a specific time interval, similar to how an RSS feed operates (there are 3rd party RSS readers also, and the Browser does support RSS). I use this feature to do a 1-hour refresh on Weather Underground for current Minneapolis, MN weather.

I think this is the best browser on a BlackBerry yet and the trackball is much better for navigating around large websites than the older scroll wheel.

The phone features of the BlackBerry handhelds are at least a part of the reason why I find Windows Mobile based devices to be so crappy. I haven’t personally used Windows Mobile 6 yet, but Windows Mobile 5′s phone was really poorly integrated into the device. the iPhone’s dialing interface is definitely on par and even exceeds the BlackBerry in simplicity in some ways, but I still think this is a more friendly phone overall.

Dialing out of the phone book is simple… just start typing someone’s name on the full QWERTY keyboard and it will find them in the phone book, click on their name and it will give you options or just dial them. Simple as that. Works like a charm. Calls, missed calls, and voicemails all show up in a central history area.

One feature I am loving more and more on this particular BlackBerry is the Voice Dialing function. You press a key, it asks you to say a command. You say “Call [whoever]“, adding “Mobile” or “Work” if the have multiple numbers (it will ask you which if you don’t). This function requires no recording of people’s names and works almost every time if spoken clearly to. It can also be used to check things like signal level or battery status without actually looking at the phone itself, which would be very useful while driving. The phone supports Stereo Bluetooth if you desire that feature (I don’t have a use for it just yet).

The BlackBerry’s biggest advantage, right here. This is the reason I went back to the BlackBerry Curve after buying an iPhone (more on that in my iPhone review).

Since BlackBerry has been popular for several years now, there is a very large development community dedicated to making applications for the device. The BlackBerry is written in a form of Java, which almost anyone can learn with enough effort, but there are some real great apps being developed and supported by programmers worldwide. I’ll list a few of my favorites below:

Google has developed 3 very good BlackBerry programs:

- Google Maps – hands down, the most useful and best program on the BlackBerry. Very similar to the iPhone version, it allows you to set favorite addresses, do turn-by-turn directions on the go, and supports Satellite view and Traffic.
- Google Talk – a great, free version of Google Talk for BlackBerry. Has 90% of the features of the real PC client for Google Talk and is similar to the web version. Even allows you to store active conversations in the messages list with your email, keeping them all in one place.
- GMail – a great interface directly to your google mail messages.

Other great applications I use (free, unless noted):

- JiveTalk – hands down the best combined (multiple services in one buddy list) instant messaging client on BlackBerry, period. It costs $19.95 but has a 30-day free trial (in which I guarantee you’ll get hooked). It supports AIM/Google Talk/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ and Jabber. The interface is similar to the Mac OS X IM app called Adium or functionally equivalent to something like Miranda IM or Trillian on PC.
- JMirc – A very stripped down, basic IRC client. Not the best I’ve ever used, but it’s free, and I use IRC all the time.
- Beyond411 – Beyond411 provides free and convenient mobile search on your Blackberry. It’s cheaper, more effective, and more complete than calling 411.
- FreeRange – FreeRange is a free RSS reader for BlackBerry.
- TwitterBerry – TwitterBerry is a mobile client for posting/reading updates to Twitter.
- JaikuBerry – JaikuBerry is a low-bandwidth, very basic way of posting presence updates to Jaiku
- Opera Mini – has web page zooming and other features not present in the BlackBerry Browser.

This is a very short list, but there are thousands of programs, games, and other software written for BlackBerry. Some free, some not. Lots of other programs exist to do many things that the base operating system applications can’t do, and these 3rd party applications do it very well in most cases. To me, this is the reason the BlackBerry is a better platform for people who want to get the most out of their mobile phone than the iPhone is.

This is a multimedia-focused BlackBerry, but it is not even close to the iPod features in iPhone. The media slot in the Curve supports MicroSD cards up to 4GB and supports SDHC. It is inconveniently located UNDER the battery, so if you want to change cards, you have to power off (hey, at least you can remove the battery!). I currently use a 2GB MicroSD card in the slot and store a few mp3 ringtones and lots of photos on it.

The Camera is a 2 megapixel sensor and has a cheap flash. It takes very nice photos for a cell phone camera — look at some of the skyscraper photos on my flickr page for examples.

The Curve supports mass storage mode, so you can connect the device and download/upload your photos/music/ringtones back and forth between the device and your computer. The device comes with a Roxio application for converting video and other media for use on the unit but I haven’t bothered using it as of yet, as it doesn’t have any use for me.

I’ve read in other reviews that if you are an AT&T customer you can stream XM radio to this device through the AT&T Media center. Since I am not on AT&T I was unable to test this feature.

Additionally, you can transfer and receive files to/from this device over Bluetooth to many other popular phones. I transferred a ringtone in WAV format from my Curve to a friend’s Motorola Q over bluetooth and it worked like a dream.

Elaborating a bit more on the Keyboard. The Curve has a keyboard no other BlackBerry has at the time of this writing. It is full QWERTY and curves to make it easier for thumb typing (and probably easier for them to fit more keys on the small frame of this phone). I find I can type about 20-30 words per minute with two thumbs, and without even looking at the keys, which is nearly impossible with the iPhone or the earlier, SureType-based BlackBerry products. It does take a few days to get used to how small the keys are, but I was typing fast in no time with occasional errors. I don’t have extensive experience with the 88xx series keyboard, but I find this one to be much better.

The trackball is new to the current generation of BlackBerry, previous to the Pearl, BlackBerry devices had a scroll wheel and a “back” soft button on the right side of the device, making them pretty much a right-hand only device. It worked well, but not nearly as well as the trackball does overall. Scrolling through E-Mail messages and webpages can be just as fast (if not faster) than the old scroller. Holding in the ALT key on the device in some areas of software lets you scroll in a page by page view which is a lot faster. I find the trackball to be just sensitive enough for me, but it is configurable in the options.

The BlackBerry Curve is a pretty awesome smart phone. It’s not too expensive if you wish to lock into a service contract on AT&T, and is still $150 cheaper with no contract than a 8GB iPhone costs with a 2 year lock-in.

Overall, I feel like this is the best cell phone I’ve ever used (right now). I switched initially from the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 to this device, and thought I’d feel like I was missing something… and I really don’t. Having the ability to freely install software is very liberating, and the MP3 ringers are great (why this isn’t on either the sidekick 3 or the iPhone I have no idea).

The downsides to the Curve are few, but the ability to read Rich Text email would be nice. Wi-Fi would also be a welcome feature for web browsing and larger picture transfers. The web browser could render as well as Safari in another generation or two, but right now is only decent. Rumor has it the Curve 8320 on T-Mobile will support T-Mobile’s new HotSpot@Home service over Wi-Fi, who knows if there’s any truth to that at this point.

I recommend this phone to anyone who wants a smartphone that really gains additional value from 3rd party software, and isn’t locked into an over-simplified set of applications, like the iPhone is. That is where this device excels. If you’ve never tried a BlackBerry before, this is the one to get. You may not care about all the stuff I talked about in my article and think the iPhone is good enough, but for me, it was enough to return it. I’m staying with the Curve for now.

Photos: I have photos of the phone (and photos taken by the phone) on flickr.