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| BlackBerry Curve 9360 Black |
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The BlackBerry Curve 9360 is small in stature, and for a BlackBerry it's small in price too. It's packed with features for a budget phone, and BlackBerry addicts will feel at right at home with that reassuringly familiar keyboard. But this Curve throws one major curveball that could see it strike out.
The Curve 9360 is a dinky little thing. It’s only a whisker away from the thinnest BlackBerry ever - the Bold 9900 - and weighs a barely-there 99g.
The camera button on the side can be reset to go straight to your favourite task, whether its recording your voice for you to dial a friend by saying their name, or quickly firing up BlackBerry Messenger. Also on the right is the volume control and mute button, with the headphone jack and a touch-sensitive locking switch on the top and a micro USB socket on the left.
On the front is a 2.44-inch screen with a very respectable level of detail: 246 pixels-per-inch. But here comes that curveball - it's not a touch-screen. In this day and age touch-screens are standard issue even on much cheaper phones, and moving around the screen using the trackpad and buttons makes the 9360 feel like a relic from a bygone age.
Instead of tapping and swiping on a touchscreen without a care in the world, the 9360 sports a small trackpad surrounded by function keys to answer or end a call, go back to the previous screen, or open the menu. Below that is the signature BlackBerry qwerty keyboard, on which the keys are well spaced for comfortable typing.
On the screen there are five panels of icons to scroll through, offering shortcuts to your favourite apps, your music, your downloads, the apps you use the most, and a list of all your apps. At the top is a useful notification bar that lets you know when you have a new email, Twitter, or Facebook message. It also alerts you when people want to chat on BlackBerry Messenger 6, the free messaging service.
It may be small, but the Curve 9360 does have some things in common with more expensive models like the Bold 9900. They use the same software and have the same range of connection options, including 3G, Wi-Fi, and GPS. They both boast a five-megapixel camera, and both have NFC built-in for zapping files to other phones simply by holding them near each other.
But in several more important areas the 9360's interior is as diminished as its exterior. The processor is an undistinguished 800MHz chip with a meagre 512MB of RAM, which means the phone is merely adequate in moving through everyday tasks like opening apps or web pages.
We wouldn't mind if these cutbacks in technology were matched by cuts in price, but the 9360 isn't that cheap. Since the previous Curve there’s been an explosion of budget-friendly qwerty-packing rivals such as the Samsung Galaxy Pro - and they all have touch-screens, not to mention a vastly superior choice of apps from the Android Market.
For example, there are a number of competitors to BlackBerry Messenger. WhatsApp is one of the BBM rivals that can be used to contact friends and family with any type of phone, where BBM only chats with other BlackBerry owners.
The lack of a touch-screen is just unforgivable, so unless you like living in the stone age we recommend either a similarly-priced Android phone or the vastly superior Bold 9900. The improvement to the experience will far outweigh any extra cost
Look and feel
It may be feather-light, but the 9360 is solid and serious
Ease of use
If you’re a BlackBerry user the software will be reassuringly familiar, but it's still nowhere near as simple and intuitive as an iPhone or Android phone. And did we mention the touch-screen thing?
Features
The qwerty keyboard is great but the lack of a touchscreen is a real problem, no matter how crisp the graphics are. You can add your own apps but the choice is way behind Apple and Android
Performance
The 800MHz processor is unremarkable, and the best that can be said about the five-megapixel camera is that it's better than the previous model's
Battery life
Barely lasts a day with even moderate Wi-Fi use
Pros: Excellent keyboard, cheaper than other BlackBerrys
Cons: No touch-screen, app store is an afterthought compared to Apple and Android
Verdict: BlackBerry old hands may be happy without a touch-screen, but the rest of the world has moved on. There are just too many Android phones, with and without qwerty keyboards, that are both better value and all-round better phones
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