BlackBerry 8520 Curve User Reviews

I got my blackberry because everyone was talking about it saying it is good. I feel that the phone is way over hyped and I would not recommend it. There are times when I want to throw the phone out the window, the blackberry messenger is ok but it get annoying when people keep broadcasting. Also sometimes it will say the person has read the message and they actually haven't.

The blackberry battery life is not good, I find myself walking around with the charger because it usually dies in the day. with minimal use it would probably last 6 or 7 hours with allot of use it will last about 4. Sometimes it will just crash and turn off for no reason. There are good points though, it's good to have a messenger because its like having free texts. Blackberry do update their features every once in a while so that's good.

Good Points - The qwerty keyboard is good for people who do not like touch screens. The scroll is sensitive (in a good way). It is very durable, and will not break the first time it is dropped. Blackberry messenger is very useful.

Bad Points - Battery life is terrible, maybe only lasts a day. It can be very sluggish whilst using the Internet. Does not have a flash on the camera so cannot use it as a light. I personally had to send it back after 3months as it had a dodgy circuit board in it. The signal receiver is not great in the phone.

Nice looking phone, let down by very poor functionality. Often crashes, needing a full re-boot. Settings are too easily changed without confirmation. When putting the phone in your pocket or bag if you haven't locked the phone it has a tendency to dial the last number called by you, this can lead to higher bills and loss of calling credit. Blackberry Internet service is awful, if you lose your Internet connection you have to attempt to log back in to Blackberry Internet services, but often the log in password has been deleted even though you have set the phone to auto log-in & remember password. No GPS but Blackberry maps installed.

This phone was a major let down, I was recommended to purchase it from a friend and it was the worst mistake I've made yet when buying a phone. The Internet is ridiculously slow, sometimes my blackberry has taken as long as 15Min's to load Google and sometimes it just doesn't load at all. My Facebook app regularly freezes and lags, it took me 3 hours to download the app in the first place as Blackberry App World also freezes and is sluggish. Straight after I purchased this phone it wouldn't let me log in to Blackberry App World, I researched this problem and found out it was quite a common problem with this particular model of Blackberry's and still I couldn't find a solution to the problem.

When I was eventually forced to take the phone into a phone shop the sales assistants in there was also struggling to sort this problem out for me and I spent an hour and a half in there, only to have to leave with the problem still not figured out. I finally discovered after having the entire contents of my Blackberry wiped that it was a simple problem because my timezone was set wrong on the phone, but over a dozen professionals couldn't tell me this; I had to figure it out for myself. The battery life is extremely temperamental, sometimes it just shoots down for no reason at all even if I have no apps running, which is quite unreliable for a phone as well. My phone also freezes a lot of the time, which means I'm constantly having to take the battery out the back and reboot it which also slams the battery down each time I do this. Do not get this phone it's caused me nothing but bother, you're either lucky with it or you're not and if you're not it is an utter nightmare.

The blackberry curve 8520 - in my opinion - is a very good, very attractive, and easy to use smart phone. The QWERTY keyboard and track pad (although the track pad sometimes crashes and is slow) are really good, modern parts of the phone, that, I think, should be on every phone. The phone has lots of fantastic applications, such as, bbm blackberry messenger, which I'd say is the best thing on the phone, as well as app world, that had LOADS of amazing apps, for free and that you can buy, plus many more applications.

On the other hand, the downsides to the phone, are the battery, it runs out extremely quickly and you have to recharge every night, which is an annoyance to those with a busy lifestyle. Also a bad point is the egg timer that seems to come up quite often, making the device slow and takes a long time loading things, which usually results in me having to take the battery out and restart the phone, because otherwise I would be waiting all day for it to eventually load. All in all, blackberry curve is a great smart phone, useful for all ages and especially useful for those working in business. Amazing phone, would recommend to anybody! Shame about the battery life and loading ability though of course.