BlackBerry Curve 8900

I got my phone contract with 02 in summer of 2009 and continued to use it on PAYG just for the infamous blackberry service until about feb this year when it finally went kaput. When I first purchased this phone, it was during the growth of blackberry's popularity. There are a lot of pros and cons with this phone, a lot I would say not specific to this model but related to blackberrys in general but I will go on to explain why I am on the fence.

Description

It is a neat, small little smartphone, which is very lightweight and easy to use. It is quite an old version of a blackberry compared to nowadays as it has the roller ball function to navigate around the phone as opposed to the more current touchpad or touchscreen even.

Pros

- Of course the blackberry messenger is a way to keep in contact with people globally at an affordable cost. The messenger service on PAYG is only £5 a month with orange, the only reason I have kept it going for so long! Blackberry Messenger allows me to keep in contacts with friends and family nationwide and abroad and messages are instant allowing more efficient chats and keeping up to date with trends as people can post statuses, pictures, group chats etc which are of course the main reason I know people would get this brand of phone!

- It's small, compact and pretty straightforward to use. Here some of the phone features:

1. It is easy enough to set up the email function so can receive notifications instantly and download attachments which are easy to view and simple click of a button to type a reply.

2.Using the camera is very easy, although only 3 megapixels, at the time of getting this phone this was a lot! It is simple enough to also record videos which are also of a decent quality.

-it's stylish and sleek and suits everyone (men and women with this curve model). Battery life is decent and would charge quickly and would last all day, with a full battery but sadly as time went on the battery life was horrendous and after about 3 hours somehow the little red bar would appear crying for an electric current to rejuvenate it! I do put this down to the longevity of blackberry phones however as opposed to it being a con of this model, as in the beginning the battery life was excellent.

Cons

- Bluetooth facility is EXTREMELY difficult to use, as you have to be paired (with a password which is often annoying as I tend to forget mine) and can only have a certain amount of pairs.

- The roller ball is HIGHLY TEMPERAMENTAL. Currently mine does not go down, left or sometimes right! (I had to teach myself alternative short cuts! very annoying. I am aware blackberry have sought to remedy this problem by creating newer models with just a scroll pad or touch screen.)

- Obviously as time went on, the entire phone began to slow down, with the system and prgrams being very slow paced and taking ages for anything to load. It would also on occasions just do random actions and say "network not found'" or simply switch itself off for no reason!

- The apps from blackberry world aren't great when I think in comparison to more upmarket android and apple apps, so on this alone I wouldn't go back to a Blackberry phone!

- The phone isn't particularly robust, and one small drop and it would switch off and take a lifetime to recover. This was an apparent reaction from the beginning and not just later on from the phone getting old. I am little Miss butter fingers so this really didn't help my confidence in this phone!

Overall I wouldn't recommend this phone, especially now when there truly are so many far superior and better quality phones on the market, even in the Blackberry family. This is quite an old phone model anyway so probably hard to get your hands on one, unless you find a refurbished old model for dirt cheap!

**N.B This review was originally posted on 05.01.2012 on DooYoo but has since been updated and much improved!!