The sleek and stylish BlackBerry 8520 Curve is one of BlackBerry’s most successful phones. It is a member of the BlackBerry Curve Smartphone family which includes other handset including the BlackBerry Curve 8900, BlackBerry Curve 8320 and the BlackBerry Curve 8310 and the 8520 combines the features from the 8300, 8310 and 8320 into one device. As with all BlackBerry’s it’s great for email and messaging.В The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is quite a slim device in terms of the BlackBerry phones. With height of 109 mm, width of 60 mm and depth of 13.9 mm the phone weighs 106 grams making it pocket friendly and it can be simply carried and used. The Blackberry Curve 8520 is a feature rich mobile phone offered by BlackBerry. It is a complete office phone with one touch access to applications. Operating on the BlackBerry OS this is very fast as it runs on a 512 MHz processor. It has WiFi and GPS built in.The Blackberry Curve 8520 offers various unique features such as: Touch-sensitive optical track pad in place of the usual trackball, Trackball, Sleep Mode, Security Password Protection and Keyboard Lock.

The Blackberry 8520 Curve is a phone built for messaging. One of the major highlights of the design is its comfortable backlit 35-key QWERTY keypad which makes it easy for those who want comfort for typing and sending messages. The Blackberry Curve 8520 supports messaging in various forms like SMS or text messaging, MMS or multimedia messaging services, Email, Instant messaging etc. With Blackberry push email technology, the 8520 can receive emails from a host of different accounts anywhere in the world without having to initiate a connection. BlackBerry devices are designed to remain on and continuously connected to the wireless network, notifying you as new e-mail arrives. In addition to the text, it also allows users to receive their e-mail with attachments in a wide range of popular file formats, including Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect, and Adobe PDF. The Documents to Go suite of apps is preinstalled, allowing you to view Word, Excel, PDF and image files on the move. Moreover, it’s supported on BlackBerry Internet Service, giving you access to up to 10 work or personal e-mail accounts (including most popular ISP e-mail accounts–including Yahoo!, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL and Gmail). A whole IM folder allows you to chat to your friends or colleagues using BlackBerry Messenger, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger with the apps already on the handset.

Designed to be efficient and convenient, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 introduces an innovative touch-sensitive optical track pad, which makes scrolling and selection smooth and easy for a great navigation experience. Like a laptop, the track pad lets you scroll through menus, icons and info by gliding your finger over it. Press and click to select an item and navigate to where you want to go. It’s complemented by a QWERTY keyboard. On either side of this navigation feature, there’s the usual BlackBerry key that pulls up a content-specific menu, depending on which app you’re using, and a back key on the right hand side. On the outer edges, you’ll find call answer and end buttons. All four of these keys are recessed, giving the Curve 8520 a super-sleek finish.

The 2.6 inches screen is a TFT screen that will display 65,000 colors with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. BlackBerry Curve 8520 comes with a track pad, just like a notebook. The screen is just as large as on the higher-end devices such as the Bold The track pad navigation system is a new feature to BlackBerry mobile phones. By using the given track pad, the user will be able to scroll through the information, icons and menus easily by just gliding the finger.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 Smartphone automatically switch between the four GMS networks and supports quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks are 850/900/1800/1900MHz frequencies. 3G connectivity is not expected to feature in the BlackBerry Curve 8520. The built in Class 10 GPRS with HSCSD (High-speed circuit-switched data) and Class 10 EDGE technology allows the user to transfer files at high speeds. This high-speed, mobile data and Internet access technology is fast enough to support a wide range of advanced data services (with average data speeds between 75-135Kbps), including video and music clips, full picture and video messaging, high-speed color Internet access, and e-mail on the go. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 Smartphone supports Wi-Fi 802.11b/g technology which provides easy Internet access via a nearby wireless LAN or via a hotspot. This handset also supports sharing or transferring of files with its micro USB and wireless Bluetooth v2.0 +EDR options. With the A2DP Bluetooth profile, you can stream your music to a pair of compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones. The phone has a 3.5mm audio jack port for headset connectivity or with car stereos. The additional advantage of A-GPS navigation with Google maps enables the users to get the direction in the unknown places and desired locations. It is pre-installed with an full-featured HTML Internet browser that allows users quickly and efficiently explore the World Wide Web as well as enables you to set up RSS feeds to stay connected to up-to-the-minute news and blog posts. The presented communication features are SMS, MMS, Wireless Email with Attachments and Instant Messaging. Furthermore, the smart phone comprises document viewer and BlackBerry Maps^TM, which takes users to a safer and smoother travel to various applicable locations.

If you like social networking sites, you’ll be happy with the Curve 8520 from BlackBerry. BlackBerry Curve 8520 provides easy instant access popular social networking sites including Facebook^TM, Twitter^TM, MySpace^TM and Windows Live Messenger^TM and photo sharing with Flickr. You’ll be provided with a unique BlackBerryВ® pin to share with other users and a 3D barcode for the quick adding of contacts. BBM^TM makes it easy to share your world with friends, family and colleagues; you can let everyone know what’s on your mind with a quick status message, share what music you’re listening to and even post your snapshots straight to Facebook^TM! Create groups to easily make plans, share lists and updates, or send SMS messages from your BBM^TM account and enjoy longer character limits with no hidden costs. BlackBerryВ® push delivery lets you see when friends are typing messages to you, when they read your replies, and informs you as soon as new emails come in. The users can take images or videos and upload them to photo sharing applications or social networking websites by using messaging services, instant messaging, etc. You can link a friend’s phonebook contact details to their Facebook profile and download images they post on their profile straight to your mobile phone. This makes it easy and convenient to keep in contact with all of your online friends.

BlackBerry Curve 8520 smart phone is loaded with possibilities as it can connect with BlackBerry App World^TM. You can download third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smart phones, including games, entertainment, social networking and sharing, news and weather, productivity and more via BlackBerry App World, adding to the many features already on the phone. The BlackBerry App world lets you access latest news in different fields, market tracking facility, live radio or playing games. BlackBerry Curve 8520 enjoys excellent compatibility with Apple computers via BlackBerryВ® Desktop Software. The smart phone also offers user friendly applications like notes, calendars, Sync contacts, messaging, call record, phone book, organizer, games etc. Some of the extras you’ll find with the 8520 include a speakerphone; voice activated dialing, conference callings, as well as multimedia messaging. It also comes loaded with certain security features such as sleep mode, keyboard lock and password protection. One can set password on phone book so that others cannot make illegal use of the mobile phone. This mobile phone also assists busy users with its scheduling and planning features. It comes with a phone book, a calendar, a to-do list, an alarm clock, and a document viewer that supports widely accepted formats.

This feature-rich handset is not just for business users. The BlackBerry Curve 8250 smart phone has an integrated 2 Megapixel camera for capturing still photos and video clips. The camera is able to click pictures with 5x digital zoom and provides a resolution of 1600×1200 pixels. The camera is also able to take video shots and the video recording can be done in two modes. In the normal mode, the resolution of the video is 320 x 240 pixels and in the MMS mode, the resolution is 176 x 144 pixels. You can upload pictures straight to Facebook, MySpace and Flickr^TM, via BlackBerry Easy Media Sharing trade; service. BlackBerry Curve 8520 comes with a media that can play different video files. Apart from playing the videos that are shot by using the camera of the smart phone, other formats of videos that the media player can play are DivX, WMV, MPEG4, and XviD.The media player of BlackBerry 8520 can play are DivX, WMV, MPEG4, and XviD video files and AAC+, eAAC+, AAC-LC, AMR-NB, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), and WMA9 PRO/WMA 10 music files. There are media keys dedicated for multimedia and music. These dedicated keys are placed atop the device. These keys help the listeners to pause music, skip tracks, and repeat favorite tracks again and again. This phone also features a built in speaker system so that you can easily share your music with your friends. В You can even mute phone calls with the easy-access mute button. With BlackBerry Media Sync you can quickly and easily sync music from iTunes and Windows Media Player with the smart phone. Apart from thirty two polyphonic ringtones, various mp3 and MIDI tones are also loaded in the gadget which offers the users with the facility of personalizing display screen.

The standard Li-Ion 1150 mAh battery of the BlackBerry 8520 has been made powerful to provide 408 hours of talk time and about 4.30 hours of standby time. The presented MicroSD^TM (TransFlash) card slot will assist the 256MB of internal memory by allowing a memory card for data storage purpose. The memory can be expanded up to 16 Gigabytes. That much expansion is good because there are multimedia features like camera, video, music and also games.

The BlackBerry 8520 Curve is a perfect phone for both work and play and is highly recommended.