Blackberry Curve 8900
Photo by O2 UK, used under CC licence
This phone is definitely a businessman’s phone. It concentrates on email, is the right size to fit in your pocket, and looks sleek and smooth. The keyboard is nicely tactile and the keys feel lovely, even if I personally find them a little small to quickly type one-handed.
If only the good design went further. The only other method of input is through a trackball, which is awkward and cumbersome to use. This does mean you get a mouse pointer while browsing the web, which is great, but it also means navigating between menu options (especially on the homescreen) is a chore. The keyboard layout could also have done with a little more thought: I struggled to find how to enter digits, the full-stop is shoved away behind a modifier key, and I kept hitting return rather than backspace.
The menu system consists of rows of icons, which looks very nice and with a touchscreen would work well, but again it’s ill thought out. There’s at least two menu items to change phone preferences and options, and I struggled to perform such a simple task as turning on the mobile phone reception.
Overall, there’s too much wrong with the phone (without even going into the inferior technical specs for such a phone, such as the lack of 3G) which sadly overshadows what is a good looking piece of technology which is a pleasure to hold. With a little more thought, this would have been a decent business mobile phone.