In one line…
The first touchscreen Curve, cheap as chips with some decent specs, but it’s screen just lets it down.
When Blackberry announced their Torch range last year I was quite excited. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to play with the other kids in the touchscreen sandpit and offer consumers their unique OS in a familiar format?
I was excited at least until I played with it and learnt that it slides open to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard.
That was like saying we’ve made a Diesel car, but in case you don’t like it, or it’s rubbish you can always go back to driving the same car in Petrol, the way you’re used to.
Choose a path and go with it. This sort of schizophrenic behaviour doesn’t instil much confidence in your touchscreens ability. Well it didn’t for me.
Feature = Touchscreen or buttons
Now Blackberry may have finally gone the full touchscreen route in their new Curve 9380, but they seem to still be holding out on taking things seriously.
Although it look frighteningly similar to it’s bigger brother Torch, the Curve 9380 doesn’t have dimensions of 3.7-inches, at only 3.2-inches, but at least they’ve had the minerals to leave out the QWERTY keyboard.
The screen also doesn’t have the resolution of the Torch, an HVGA 360x480px screen, even thought the Torch 9810 has the same size screen. I’m not a tremendously picky person, and the screen is bright and viewable from many angles, but when surfing the web you shouldn’t be able to see any pixilation on a modern day smarthphone and on the 9380 you can.
These exclusion though have allowed the Berry to much thinner than most of its other phones, 11.2mm at its fattest and 98g.
Feature = Price
The good news is that the phone is one the cheap end of the scale, R4 300 is decent for a new Blackberry.
Feature = Battery life
Not being made for tons of media consumption, the battery does alright. But look around you for the nearest 16-year-old. Those tweeting teen thumbs work at a pace more efficient than Patricia de Lille. That battery will take strain.
Feature = Usefulness and design
And now the most confusing part, the phone is packed with decent specs and actually runs quite well.
The day the 9380 arrived for review, I plonked down on the couch in front of an episode of the Boondocks and went to work sifting through the last batch of emails.
Delete, delete, delete.
I’ll send it through first thing in the morning!
I haven’t received anything yet, please send it through ASAP.
“Hey! This is easier than I thought. I should do all my work while on the couch” I thought as I sat the phone down next to me, done for the day. But it wasn’t the 9380 I was putting down, it was my iPhone.
Turns out mid way through my session I had given up on the 9380, its demand for both of my thumbs on the screen, its tetchy touchscreen and its small font.
What do I think?
I think BB are doing good by getting into touchscreen, I think they’ll finally make their user interface friendlier and they’ll finally get a bit of the media-junkie crowd on their team, but it won’t be with the 9380. Give them some time.
