BlackBerry Curve 8320 Review - Multimedia
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Alfredo Padilla Published on October 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (2.62)
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 7.62 | 2.62 |
| Nokia E90 | 7.31 | 2.74 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8300 (AT&T) | 4.84 | 4.13 |
| HTC Mogul | 6.06 | 3.30 |
| T-Mobile Dash | 4.53 | 4.42 |
| Apple iPhone | 3.10 | 6.45 |
Dedicated Music Controls (1.0)
When music is playing in the background on the BlackBerry Curve 8320 the only dedicated buttons to control music playback are the volume keys. There's no way to control play/pause or skip tracks without going back to the music player. It should be noted, though, that RIM has thoughtfully made getting back to your playing music simple by adding a "now playing" option to the menus throughout the phone whenever music is playing. While helpful, this doesn't replace true music controls.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (5.8)
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The BlackBerry Curve 8320 does not support direct music downloads to your device.
Streaming (0.0)
The Curve doesn't support streaming MP3, AAC, or Real audio.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The BlackBerry Curve 8320 doesn't have any software that organizes or downloads podcasts on your device.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The Curve synchronizes easily with your Windows PC by using USB mode and Windows Media Player. RIM also provides a Roxio program for synchronization, but we didn't find it to be very functional.
Music Formats and DRM (0.0)
The Curve supports AAC, MP3, Wav, and Windows Media Audio files. Unfortunately there is no support for DRM protected content, so you can't listen to your music from iTunes, Rhapsody, or Napster.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The Curve does an admirable job when a call comes in while music is playing. The music is immediately paused and audio switches to the phone call. When the call is completed music starts right back up again. The only thing we would have liked to see is a fade when the music stops and starts; it can be jarring if you go straight from a whispered conversation with a loved one back to the death metal song you were listening to.
Video
Video Software Access (2.48)
To see how easy it is to get a video playing on the BlackBerry Curve 8320 we timed how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a video going. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Curve took 8.08 seconds to get a video playing. This is on the slow end of our comparison phones. | Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 8.08 | 2.48 |
| Nokia E90 | 7.55 | 2.65 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8300 (AT&T) | 6.17 | 3.24 |
| HTC Mogul | 7.64 | 2.62 |
| T-Mobile Dash | 4.83 | 4.14 |
| Apple iPhone | 3.20 | 6.25 |
Video Controls (5.0)
The video controls on the BlackBerry Curve 8320 are pretty solid. The volume keys do their thing while play, pause, and stop are available via the trackball. You can also use the trackball to move forward or back in a video by selecting the scrub bar and moving left or right on the trackball. You can also use the symbol key to toggle to a full screen view, although we found a lot of our videos had a large black border around them instead of true full screen.
Video Software & Organization (1.5)
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There aren't many organization options in the BlackBerry Curve 8320's video software. You can only view your videos by title, however there is search functionality available. The menu is accessed via the menu key, as you would expect, but you don't see many additional options here. Background play isn't supported, either.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music, you can synchronize video between your PC and Curve using the phone as a mass storage device and Windows Media Player. Again, you can also used the included Roxio software, but this isn't very good.
Video Formats (3.5)
The Curve was able to handle all three of our 3GP-encoded files, with H263 and MP4 codecs. It doesn't support MP4 files encoded with H264, nor does it support QuickTime, Flash, or Windows Media Video files.
Video DRM (0.0)
The BlackBerry Curve 8320 doesn't support any form of video DRM.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We were pleased to see the Curve was able to play back all five of our test video files. These files are of varying bitrates and top out at 768 Kbps. This means the Curve can handle fairly high-quality video without a problem.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
You can't download videos directly to the Curve.
Video Streaming unscored
We don't score this section because there are so many different and rapidly changing standards for video streaming. In regards to the BlackBerry Curve 8320 it doesn't really matter, since it wasn't able to handle any of the sites we try out for informational purposes, including YouTube Mobile.
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