BlackBerry Curve 8330 is the New Hotness

Alright so the BlackBerry Curve has been on the market for some time now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the new hotness when you compare it to the Blackberry 7250 that it is replacing. That’s right my employer has upgraded my old school, wide BlackBerry 7250 with a sleek, thinner more hip looking 8330 Curve and at no additional cost to me!

But Tyler, doesn’t that mean you have two cellphones now?

Why yes it does, but I have had two cellphones for some time now too. I have my Apple 3G iPhone and now a new BlackBerry Curve 8330. It is a bit much to have two cellphones and the possibility of radiation near my hips does lurk in the back of my mind. My employer pays for the Blackberry and I use it for company emails and so they can get in touch with me whenever they want.

Why wouldn’t they call you on your iPhone?

They do, when they cannot get a hold of me on the BlackBerry for some unknown reason. Ideally I would like to scrap the Blackberry and just use my iPhone since it offers ActiveSync functionality but in order for my employer to use it would require them to upgrade to MS Exchange 2008 and that would also mean converting their 2 in house mail servers from 32bit hardware to 64bit hardware and that would not be cheep. MS Exchange 2007 works fine on the 2 Dell PowerEdges we currently use and there is no easy way of getting ActiveSync to work without many many man hours involved. I can’t even get IMAP working through our MS Exchange server properly due to the ISA (firewall) not forwarding the IMAP posts properly if I were to go that route either.

I would preferably like to use 1 cellphone instead of two. If I could get my email working on my iPhone I might be able to get them to pay a portion of the phone bill and that would be great.

BlackBerry 8330 First Impressions

So far I have not really played much with my BlackBerry Curve but it seems that Bell Mobility wants me to pay a monthly subscription fee on programs such as MSN Messenger Live, GPSNav and even their Facebook application. Pay for software that normally I wouldn’t have to pay for? The trickery of yet another Canadian cellular provider.

The size of the BlackBerry Curve 8330 is smaller and more narrower than the 7250. I also like that it has a full QWERTY keyboard unlike the BlackBerry Pearls which have a pseudo QWERTY keyboard.

The 8330 also boosts a 2MP camera with digital zoom, video capture capabilities, GPS and some other features. Too bad I have to pay a subscription fee to use programs such as Facebook or MSN Messenger. I am assuming it is the same for GTalk, and AIM as well.

I also have not surfed the web on the BlackBerry Curve yet either. Bell Mobility does not have 3G capabilities so surfing the web on my iPhone is better and my iPhone also supports WiFi so why would I use the BlackBerry Curve to do this?

I do like the slightly upgraded version of the message (email) application on the BlackBerry. The screen is also a great upgrade over the previous 7250 as well. The 8330’s screen is larger and brighter which makes it easier to see and work.

Overall if I did not have the Apple 3G iPhone I would be really happy with the BlackBerry Curve 8330. The smaller, sleeker design fits nicer in my hand, the brightness and clarity of the screen is a much larger improvement over my previous 7250 but it might take some time for me to get used to the trackball navigation.

All I need to do is find some sort of hip clip case for the BlackBerry 8330 and I think I am good to go.