SmartPhones

In partnership with Rogers Wireless (meaning Canadians get first dibs at this device), RIM last week announced the release of a new BlackBerry Curve. This long-awaited successor to the benchmark-setting smartphone (which this reviewer personally owns, incidentally) is also known as the BlackBerry 8900, and it appears to be a smart improvement on a winning smartphone design.

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 sports the thinnest casing of any BlackBerry yet, and the lightest – weighing in at only 110 grams. It’s got a 2.4” hi-res 480 x 360 pixel, HVGA+ light-sensitive display, and a powerful 512 MHz processor.

The 8900’s 3.2 megapixel camera comes with built-in flash, auto-focus, image stabilization, video recording, and photo geotagging capabilities. The 8900’s more-versatile media player that includes streaming audio and video support.

Like its predecessor it has a full QWERTY keyboard, with support for quad-band EDGE, and a built-in GPS (w/TeleNav GPS Navigaotr and BlackBerry Maps support). Unlike its predecessor, however, the new Curve also has built-in WiFi.

And staying true to its reputation as the preeminent electronic organizer (sorry, Palm) the newest BlackBerry retains (and in some cases even improves upon) its expansive email, organizer, and web-browsing capabilities. Expanded messaging capabilities include built-in support for:
•    BlackBerry Messenger
•    GoogleTalk
•    Windows Live Messenger
•    Yahoo! Messenger

Even phoning features have improved, with enhanced background noise cancelling, low-distortion speakerphone, and voice-activated dialing features.

The BlackBerry 8900 also supports:
•    Facebook for BlackBerry
•    DataViz Documents to Go - for editing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs
•    BlackBerry Media Sync – for syncing your Curve up with your iTunes music library
•    BlackBerry Internet Service – allowing access for up to 10 users (both personal and corporate accounts)
•    BlackBerry Enterprise Server

The new Curve’s removable and rechargeable battery provides around 5 1/2 hours of talk time and about 15 days worth of standby time.

Now for a couple of cons to the new Curve, beginning with its lack of 3G support (unlike the new BlackBerry Bold and BlackBbery Storm). Also, it only comes with a measley 256 MB of on-board memory, though it does have a microSD card slot capable of up to 16 GB of expansion memory.

Already on sale in Canada, the BlackBerry Curve 8900 is also about to be made available in the UK. US customers, however, will have to wait a bit longer, hopefully no longer than the first half of ’09.