AT&T may have scored the RIM BlackBerry 8820 last week, but we're thinking T-Mobile got the better deal with the just-announced RIM BlackBerry 8320, aka the BlackBerry Curve with Wi-Fi. Why? Well, first it has the same sleek design of the original Curve with a more spacious and easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard. You also get a 2-megapixel camera, whereas the BlackBerry 8820 is sans camera. Of course, the latter is definitely aimed more at the business set, whereas the BlackBerry 8320 will appeal to a wider audience, and we're thinking it'll be a hit. The Curve offers solid performance, a great design, excellent messaging features, and the addition of Wi-Fi is icing on the cake.

Design of the BlackBerry Curve 8320 Handheld

We loved the design of the first RIM BlackBerry Curve, so we're glad to see the company didn't mess with a good thing when the RIM BlackBerrry 8320. It still offers a best-of-breed design that beautifully combines a full QWERTY keyboard into a sleek and compact form factor (107mm high by 60mm wide by 15.5mm deep; 111g). With such a slim profile and small weight, the Curve is comfortable to hold and use as a phone, even though it has a wider body than regular cell phones. The outer edges also have a soft-touch finish to give them a rubbery texture, thus making the device easier to grip.

On front of the device, there's a 2.5-inch diagonal, 65,000-color screen with a 320 x 240-pixel resolution. The display features a light-sensing technology that automatically adjusts the backlighting of the screen as well as the keyboard, based on your environment (indoors, outdoors, a dark room, and so forth). In addition, you can customize the screen with various themes and wallpaper, as well as adjust the font size, family, and style. We didn't have any problems reading the contents of the screen under various lighting conditions, and both text and images were sharp and vibrant.

As with all BlackBerry models, the BlackBerry 8320 does not have a touchscreen, but we still found the device easy to use and navigate with the provided controls. You'll find these controls beneath the screen; they include the Talk and End/power buttons, a Menu shortcut, an Escape key, and the trackball navigator. You can adjust the sensitivity of the latter under the Settings > Screen/Keyboard menu. Along the right side, there is a volume rocker and a user-defined launch button that's set to activate the camera by default. The left side holds a mini-USB port as well as another programmable convenience key, and--good news--the Curve is equipped with a 3.5mm headset jack, so you can plug in Walkman-style headphones.

One of the biggest complaints about the BlackBerry 8820 was its keyboard. RIM switched up the layout and feel of the keyboard on the 8820, and many users found the buttons to be slippery and cramped. Happily, the BlackBerry Curve's full QWERTY keyboard offers a better typing experience as it reverts to the styling of the keys found on the BlackBerry 8700g. This means you get more spacing between the buttons, and they're tactile and less slick.

Finally, the camera lens, flash, and self-portrait mirror are on the back of the device, and a mute button is located on top. The Curve is equipped with a microSD slot, but it's located behind the battery, so it's a bit inconvenient to access.

Features of the BlackBerry Curve 8320 Handheld

The RIM BlackBerry 8320's biggest draw is the addition of Wi-Fi. It supports 802.11b/g, whether you're using your home or corporate network or hopping onto a Wi-Fi hotspot. Other wireless options include EDGE and Bluetooth. Supported Bluetooth profiles include those for wireless headsets, handsfree kits, dial-up networking, object exchange, and A2DP for stereo Bluetooth headsets. Unlike the BlackBerry 8820, however, the Curve doesn't include a GPS radio. Instead, you will have to take advantage of the device's integrated Bluetooth and add this functionality via a Bluetooth GPS receiver. There's no 3G support, but seeing as T-Mobile has yet to roll out its 3G network, this is a bit of a non-point at this time.

As for voice features, the Curve is a quadband world phone and offers a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, and speed dial. In addition, the phone features advanced audio technology that's supposed to cancel out background noise and echoes and will automatically increase the volume when you're in a noisy environment. The BlackBerry 8320's phone book is limited only by the available memory--the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts--with room in each entry for eight phone numbers, email addresses, work and home addresses, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo to a contact as well a group category--business or personal--or one of 45 polyphonic ringtones.

The BlackBerry 8320 is compatible with your company's BlackBerry Enterprise server with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise to deliver corporate email in real time. In total, the device can support as many as 10 accounts, including POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts, and there is an email wizard on the device to guide you through the setup process. An attachment viewer is also onboard to open popular file formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF, and more, and we were able to receive and open all files. Other messaging options include text, multimedia, and instant messaging.

Like the original Curve, the BlackBerry 8320 has a spell-check feature for emails. As you would expect, the feature will look for any spelling errors in your messages before they're sent and offer alternatives to misspelled words. Spell-check is also available for memos, but not for text messages. You can turn this feature on under the Options > Spell Check menu, where you can also find settings to ignore acronyms, words with numbers, add words to a custom dictionary, and more. During our review period, the feature worked great, and it definitely comes in handy--especially if you're sending messages to clients, your boss, and other professionals.

There are a number of PIM tools, such as a calendar, a tasks list, a memo pad, an alarm, a calculator, and the BlackBerry maps application. The latter is particularly useful, as it gives you maps of the US as well as text-based driving directions--great for mobile professionals.

For multimedia, the BlackBerry 8320 boasts a 2-megapixel camera with a 5x zoom and a built-in flash, but unfortunately, still no video-recording capabilities. You do get three picture sizes (1,600 x 1,200; 1,024 x 768; and 640 x 480) and three quality options (superfine, fine, and normal). You can also tweak the white balance and add color effects. Picture quality was good when we could get a clear shot. We found it a bit difficult to get steady shot and had to really concentrate on holding the phone still in order to get a decent photo. Once we did, however, pictures had decent color tone and definition.

There's also a media player onboard that supports MP3, AAC, MIDI, and WAV music files and AVI, MP4, MOV, and 3GP video formats. There's 64MB of flash memory, but you should store multimedia files on a microSD card since they tend to be memory hogs. The music player is pretty rudimentary, but it displays some track information such as title, artist, and album art, and you can create playlists as well as shuffle and repeat songs. You can have music play in the background while you use the device's other apps, and if there's an incoming call, the Curve will pause the music, then resume the track after you hang up. One notable improvement to the video player is the support for full-screen mode, so you can take advantage of the entire screen's real estate. The 3.5mm headset jack is also a boost, since it gives you the ability to plug in a better set of headphones or earbuds.

Performance of the BlackBerry Curve 8320 Handheld

We tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) RIM BlackBerry 8320 in San Francisco using the T-Mobile service, and call quality was outstanding. Audio was crisp and loud on our end, and we had absolutely no problem interacting with our bank's voice-automated response system. Our friends were also impressed by how good calls sounded and had no complaints of any background noise or distortion. There was a slight background hiss when we activated the speakerphone, but nothing that prevented us from carrying on a conversation. We were able to pair the BlackBerry 8320 to both the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Nokia BH-604 stereo Bluetooth headphones.

In everyday use, there were some slight delays, such as when activating the camera or viewing photos, but overall we enjoyed snappy performance. Music playback through the device's speakers was good, with fairly full sound and decent balance, but we could have done with a little more bass. Watching video was smooth overall. Audio and video were synchronized, but as expected there was some pixelation of the picture during action sequences. Web browsing was swift over Wi-Fi, while a bit poky using T-Mobile's EDGE network. We also admit that the BlackBerry Web browser isn't quite as sleek as those found on Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm smart phones.

The BlackBerry 8320 has a rated talktime battery life of 4 hours and up to 17 days of standby time. According to FCC radiation tests, the BlackBerry 8320 has a digital SAR rating of 1.51 watts per kilogram.