BlackBerry's Curve 8520 smartphone is too expensive to be a serious contender

by  Tim Danton  |  Thursday 12 November 2009
BlackBerry's Curve 8520 smartphone is too expensive to be a serious contender
Rating
Overall:

We like the ambition of producing a low-cost BlackBerry, but until it drops in price there’s too much competition.

Performance:
3
Features & Design:
4
Value for money:
4
Specs
256MB Flash memory; 2.5in 320 x 240 LCD; Bluetooth; quad-band GSM; EDGE; 802.11bg Wi-Fi; 2mp camera; 1150mAh battery; 3.5mm headphone jack; 60 x 13.9 x 109mm (WDH); 106g
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Benchmarks

How we test

Mobile

Graph key:
 A-List product  Blackberry Curve 8520  Related product
HTML Page Load Test
HTC One X (A-List Product)
Average time taken 7s
Sunspider
HTC One X (A-List Product)
Average time taken 2203ms
Battery Life
HTC One X (A-List Product)
21% remaining after 24 hours
Quadrant
HTC One X (A-List Product)
4868
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See more about:  blackberry  |  curve  |  8520  |  smartphone
 
 
Comments: 1
pidasms
7 January 2010
 nice looking phone, but it looks fairly identical to the HTC snap, which is itself a smaller but similar phone with similar specs to the Blackberry Bold. What your review misses is the critical information that of the Blackberry models only the Bold gets a blue tick for rural usage, of the HTC models only the Snap does, no nokia PDA does, only several of its multimedia type phones, and the only other maker of PDAs to get a blue tick is the Palm Treo, now superceded. All three have "ünlocked" GPS meaning you can put any mapping software and any maps on them. They all run google maps, but I loaded Memory Map on my HTC snap and it runs like a charm. So I think for rural usage or usage outside a capital city (? lots of Business users) a blue tick and a versatile GPS are important. Nokia locks its phones to Nokia Maps unfortunately. A touch screen is nice, the palm treo has both, but I like a qwerty keyboard.


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BlackBerry's Curve 8520 smartphone is too expensive to be a serious contender?
We like the ambition of producing a low-cost BlackBerry, but until it drops in price there’s too much competition.

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