Blackberry Curve 8520 Review - From the young consumers point of view

rafmarinello · Thread Author #1 02-03-2011, 01:04 AM

After longs months of begging my mother to by me a BlackBerry, (8 months to be exact) I finally got one for Christmas. Now this review is kinda different to others, as most of them would of been made by adults, but this one if from a 13 year olds point of view...

First Impressions

Great! The phone looked great and the keyboard was very comfortable to use. I booted it up and set it up with the very helpful set up wizards and I cracked on to using it. I was not disappointed. I was very happy with it and thought it was simply great. One thing though which was a bit of a pain was the lengthy set up to get BIS. I had to call me phone's service provider just to set it up... and then to finish I had to do a battery pull. I liked the look of the OS (which was 4.6) and then when I upgraded to 5 it was even better!

Hardware

I thought the form factor was great and looked very good. For me the hardware is good and I like the rubber edges... It makes it easier to hold. The camera is only 2MP which is kinda disappointing but in good light it can take some good pics.. and anyways it's a phone... if I wanted a camera I would got one instead! Also for the phone and the OS requirements the phone is pretty speedy for me. I don't really experience major lag unless I'm running about 5 apps in the background.

Software

I think that OS 5 is great and I definitely did like the software.. the menu layout is great in my opinion. Also I love the Blackberry Messenger App. This is the main reason I wanted the phone and I have not been disappointed with it. I think that this is a very goo service. Also I think the Facebook app is good too. I can update my status and get notifications instantly to my Blackberry. I have installed about 20 apps on my phone and I still have about 80MB of memory left which I think it okay... but I would of preferred it if you could install apps to your memory card. Overall I think that the software is great.

Battery Life

I think that the battery life is nice and solid. When I first got it, it would hardly last a day, but then the battery broke in and I can get two days out of it with constant usage.

"Kiting It Out"

I know people like to put cases on their phone and so do I. I there is such a variety that you can get over Amazon.. and here in England everywhere... for such a cheap price. I put a mirrored screen protector on mine and a case which I will post underneath this paragraph. I also like the fact that there are hundreds of themes to put on your phone and I chose the MyStorm turquoise theme which is on this site.

Longer Term Observations

After having the phone for over a months really nothing has changed over my initial opinion. I still think the phone is great and I keep loving it more everyday. One thing although which I know is a common problem with this phone is the fact the the trackpad can drop down deeoer and the buttons raise up.. and this has happened a bit to me.. but not majorly

Conclusion

I think that this is a great phone for all ages.. and I think the BBM app is exceptional. I would rate it 4 stars out of 5. Things that could be better are the camera.

Pro & Cons

Pros