BlackBerry 8530 Review

The time has come for me to finally release a review of my main cell phone.  I have had the BlackBerry Curve 8530 for about a month and thus far am in love with the device.  My previous phone, the Samsung Delve, turned out to be a horrible choice in a phone.  The Delve was a clunky touch screen phone that usually froze up and ended up being a horrible choice.  So, now that I have my BlackBerry, I know I am not changing phones anytime soon.  I honestly see myself sticking with the BlackBerry name through the next few years.  So on to the review part of the phone.

The first thing I want to talk about is the overall design of the Curve 8530.  As you read this, compare my text to the picture at right.  Firstly, my phone is on the US Cellular network, not T-Mobile.  Alright let’s take a look at the design of the phone.  The edges are nice and round and very sleek.  I see myself using the word sleek a lot during this review.  Anyway, on the front you have the main screen and four physical navigation buttons with the trackpad type thing in the middle that acts as a mouse in the Browser and as another navigation means.  You also have the full QWERTY keyboard on the bottom.  I am in love with the QWERTY keyboard.  It is so easy for me to use and I even have pretty large hands but I can easily text and type with great ease.  The only thing that needs to change is the period key.  I am getting slightly tired of having to hit the alt key to do a period.  But, it also works to hit the spacebar two times to end a sentence.  It took me a little while to get used to using the alt and the caps keys, but I am fully operational on those now.  On the back of the phone, you have the 2 MP camera with no flash.  The back also has the cover to get to the battery, SIM card and SD card.  My phone came with a 2GB built-in SD card, but I swapped it for my preloaded 8GB music card.  Do not remove the back cover more than you need to…it really starts to get loose after removing it too often.  That’s one of the downsides I have noticed with the design of the phone.  On the side of the phone you have slider keys.  On the left side there is one key and that is for Voice Dialing.  I changed that key so that when I push it, my phone goes into a password lock.  On the right you have three keys.  The top two are for volume and the other one activates the camera.

Let’s move on to the interface.  I love it.  I will use this word again: sleek.  You have six icons on the bottom in a sort of dock or taskbar.  My top six applications are SMS, Browser, Messages, Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.  Those are the top apps that I use and most of them are used daily.  When you hit the BlackBerry icon button it takes you to another screen where it lists all your other applications.  To install an application you use the AppWorld app.  That app is great.  I have loaded a bunch of apps that are fun, useful and free.  Highly recommend that store.  On that same menu you can change Options, set up Bluetooth, Wifi and sync your email services with the phone.  Every time my Gmail gets a new message, my phone dings or vibrates.  At times I find all these notifications to be annoying, but these apps and this phone are replacing desktop email for me.  Slowly but surely.

Let’s go on to call quality.  I find the volume to be rather quite even though I have the volume up all the way.  I have never had anyone tell me my quality or audio level is bad, so I am assuming all is good there.  I have never dropped a call and the phone is still easy to use while on speaker phone because I can still do messaging, browse the Internet or read email.  This phone is very good at multitasking.  This is not so much a call quality thing as an audio quality thing, but the speaker on this thing is very loud.  It is very beneficial to play music because it can easily be heard from a distance.

In closing, the phone is very easy to use and if you have never used a BlackBerry before, give it a try.  It is a great multitasking phone that is built mainly for business.  I recommend the phone especially if you want to do Internet and email on the go.  The phone has built in Wifi as well, so if you have bad signal strength, just hook up some Wifi.  Overall I recommend the phone as a solid smartphone.  I will definitely be sticking with the BlackBerry name for a while.  In the comments, let me know if you use BlackBerry or are thinking about switching over.  Do you like your BB, what kind do you have, etc.

Also, if you want to add me on BlackBerry Messenger, here is my pin: 3232C2E0

Cheers and take care.