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| BlackBerry Curve 8320 Smartphone Titanium (T-Mobile) | 
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| Brand: BlackBerry
Category: Wireless
Buy New: Too low to display
New (2) Used (1) Refurbished (1)
Avg. Customer Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 7
Color: Silver
Media: Wireless Phone
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 0 x 0 x 0
Model: 8320 Curve
UPC: 610214614957
ASIN: B000W79GQA
Release Date: September 24, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Promotion: Data not available Terms and Conditions
Promotion: Save $5.00 when you spend $25.00 or more on Qualifying Items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout. Terms and Conditions
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great Blackberry, crippled only by T-mobile October 27, 2007
47 out of 56 found this review helpful
This review is for the Blackberry 8320 Curve by T-Mobile. A device is only as good as its service provider - in this case unfortunately T-mobile is a poor one. I received this BB only a few days ago with much excitement. It permits you to pull corporate mail, connect to a wi-fi router to make VOIP based calls and other great features - too many to list.
I had chosen the $19.99 Blackberry Internet Service plan for 10 ISP based emails (POP3/IMAP), Internet browsing (though mainly WAP, not true HTML - BB's proxy servers strip out rich content) and Instant Messaging clients (AIM, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, Windows Live messenger). Though you need to spring another $10 to pull corporate mail from your company's BES server, you still can pull work mail if your company permits browser based email access. By this I mean Outlook Web Access (i.e. https://mail.yourcompany.com/exchange). The extra $10 does buy you instant 'push' email, whereas OWA access does have a 10-15 minute delay. If you can live with this small setback, then you should be fine with the $19.99 BIS plan.
Once I received my BB 8320, I realized that reception was very poor inside my house (1-2 bars, fluctuating quite a bit as well). The purpose of T-mobile providing three types of UMA (unlicensed mobile access) based phones to subscribers is that they know their network has poor performance, especially inside buildings. Signing up for their $19.99 Hotspot@home service allows you to connect to your home router (provided by T-mobile) and any of their 8000 Hotspot locations in Starbucks nation wide. I myself did not sign up for the Hotspot@home service, but just connected to my own home wi-fi router. This seemed to work well, but was intermittent and in the end unreliable. I noticed that connecting to my home wi-fi router caused alot of connection failures for my laptops and desktops. The phone is smart enough to figure out when to switch out of GSM/GPRS and onto wi-fi where available.
My main gripe with T-mobile is that their network does not have good coverage within buildings. Not all buildings that I happen to be in a given day have open wifi access points - this unfortunately makes the UMA feature unusable. The fact that T-mobile's network is solely on the 1900mhz GSM spectrum, and not also 850mhz is likely the reason why building penetration is poor. On a few occasions where I had full bars, I was unable to make an outgoing call up until my 3rd attempt. Also, while standing in line at Potbelly's where I had full bars - I was unable to make an outgoing call to a friend's cell phone (got the 'circuits busy' message). As a paying wireless subscriber, I feel that my $70/mth plan should amount to some sort of guarantee that I will be able to place a call when needed.
On the positive side, I did have good coverage in most of the DC metropolitan area including my Washington, D.C. office. Even though their signal seems strong in a good amount of areas, not having a reliable signal at home really does drive one crazy. I really like the phone itself. It is very light and easy to use - OS performance is quick and reactive. Keyboard feedback is also very good, didn't take me too long to adjust from a regular phone to typing on this BB. As mentioned earlier there is a multitude of applications already installed and further on there are alot of 3rd party applications that are available online for free. The speaker phone was very clear and audible. Having the myFaves deal is great if you speak to specific friends/loved ones alot - keep in mind that you are limited to 5 people and that you can update these numbers only once every billing cycle. Setup of email was quick and painless, everything gets pushed immediately except for my corporate email (as mentioned above).
In the end I feel that my 3 star rating for this product is justified due to the fact that the BB device is great, but falls short of strong performance due to its marriage to T-mobile. I used to have a T-mobile Sidekick (only data, no voice plan) 4 years ago and it was plagued by poor reception at my college. Thought maybe 4 long years was enough for T-mobile to get their act together....should have known better.
 An iPhone killer? October 13, 2007
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
OK - this phone is not perfect. But I am very happy I added two years to my sentence with TMO and upgraded to the curve. Not only has RIM improved on the blackberry interface but the ability to add a microSD card (I added 4gigs) makes it a great media player. Now, I know it does not come close to the interface of an iPod, but seriously who cares! Using Missing Sync I was able to sync a playlist directly from iTunes and a photo book directly from iPhoto! It supports stereo bluetooth (something the iPhone doesn't) and it has an actual keyboard which is something that comes in handy if you type a lot of SMS, emails or use the internet on your phone.
At home the curve connects to my home network and gets me off that painful EDGE network for data and VoIP. This has also come in handy in office buildings where reception on TMO's network was not adequate.
The only thing that really bugs me is that the camera is very slow taking pictures.
I highly recommend this device!
Its good but... October 11, 2007
20 out of 22 found this review helpful
The T-Mobile Blackberry 8320 is good, especially the WiFi easy-breezy automatic connections. Its no-muss no fuss to set up wifi and the system recognizes whether to switch on Wifi automatically almost everywhere I go. The web browser find Internet links in usable time - unlike my old Treo. The screen is bright and beautiful and the keyboard very functional.
Three things which still need some work, however, before it gets 5 stars.
1. One cannot download bookmarks, it appears, direct from IE to the browser, a fact which is a real pain. A simple thing but frustrating.
2. Although this phone has moved towards multimedia, I still can't get the video or audio to play with standard formats from the usual internet websites, such as those for radio or YouTube. There is no RealAudio, QuickTime or equivalent app which can be downloaded for blackberries and the media player system which is bundled with the phone seems very limited.
3. Lastly the memory allows little space for multimedia so you also need to buy a memory card for any music etc.
Other than these points, its a good phone.
Best yet, but not perfect October 10, 2007
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Switched by 7800G for the Curve. The keyboard is the same as the 7800G which is good. The new features are great - I use the MP3 player, phone and voice dialling. The phone seems more well made than previously blackberries.
The one negative is I have had experience with the phone freezing when getting calls. Eventually I see an exception/error on the screen.
The Best BlackBerry October 9, 2007
38 out of 39 found this review helpful
It has been a very long time since I have had so much fun with a smartphone. In fact I would include Palms, Jornadas, and the much missed and lamented Newton to the mix The BlackBerry 8320 was amazingly easy to get up and running with PocketMac. This isn't always the case with some other BB's. I was particularly pleased to discover that OperaMini installed and performed flawlessly. There has been much talk on various boards claiming that T-Mobile has deliberately set their phones so that they won't run third party apps. My experience says otherwise.
The fact that the 8320 has WiFi was a huge selling point for me. Our house is located in what may very will be the most cell signal challenged spot in the county. This BB instantly located our AirPort signal and I was finally able to to make calls from home, via the UMA feature. Emails load very quickly, and it performs like a real champ when it's time to send a SMS or MMS. The screen is very bright and clear. It does a reasonably good job in direct sunlight, but then I have yet to find a phone whose screen delivers as promised in that area. It is also very sharp and easy to see. That's quite an accomplishment considering my poor eyesight. The 2.0 megapixel camera is pretty useful with it's zoom and flash abilities. Under the right set of circumstances it's capable of producing some pretty good photos. It also has a SD card slot so that you can store larger media files, or whatever else your heart desires. The web browsing experience is better than you you might expect. It also features voice dialing. I was impressed liked the phone's search function. I don't know if it is typical of other BlackBerries, but I found it to be extremely fast and very useful.
The reception is better than other phones that I have owned in the past. It it also very good looking and feels solidly made. The rubberized sides give the 8320 an extra secure grip. Finally, the real QWERTY keyboard is (for me at last) a huge improvement over the Pearl's Sure Type system. The keys are raised and separated just enough to make typing quickly possible, and this from a serious klutz. It also has spell check as part of it's core programming. That is something I desperately need.
When the iPhone first hit the scene I felt left out of the party because T-Mobile wouldn't be a seller. But I have had nothing other than positive experiences with T-Mobile. I don't work for or have any financial interest in the company, so I can honestly state that T-Mobile tech support ranks right up there with Apple. So why should I surrender that comfort level to try someone new? Also, I have read many, many bad things about AT&T customer service.
The release of the BlackBerry 8320 has taken the sting out the iPhone's release, and has provided me with a wonderfully functional, enjoyable & reliable prosumer's dream of a BlackBerry.
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