BlackBerry Curve review - Messaging
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Mark Brezinski Published on August 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Supported E-mail Services (6.5)
The Curve has the same e-mail software BlackBerry phones usually have, which works with POP3 and IMAP servers. It still doesn't come with built-in support for popular e-mail services, like Gmail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail, but you can set up your Curve to be able to send/receive e-mail from these accounts if you know the correct settings. We don't award points for this, however; we are looking for devices that make it easy to get your email, not ones that force you to dig up obscure setttings to do so.
Push E-mail (4.0)
Push e-mail is available to Curve users in one of two flavors, the BlackBerry Internet Server or the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. This system is standard BlackBerry fare. As anyone would guess from the names, individual users should use the former and companies will use the latter. You can also use Microsoft Outlook via the BlackBerry's desktop redirector. When run on your PC, it will forward e-mail to your Curve automatically.
Multiple E-mail Accounts (10.0)
The BlackBerry can support up to 10 different e-mail accounts. There are three ways to add them: on the device, with the desktop software, or online. Each method is extremely user-friendly.
HTML and Attachments (0.0)
Like its predecessors, the Curve can't handle HTML. If you receive an e-mail with HTML, it will just spew out the code text.
You can open attachments on the Curve by clicking on them, on the "[# Attachments]" text at the top ("#" being the number of attachments), or through the menu button. We were able to view Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Zip files, and PDF files, but we couldn't edit them.
E-mail Customizations (2.0)
Just about the only way you can customize e-mail for the Curve is by adding signatures for outgoing e-mail. You can't change the font within the e-mail, but you can change the global font and text size in the phone's settings.
Time to a New Message (21.05)
To test how easy it is to create a new e-mail message, we time how long it takes to open up a blank e-mail form from the home screen. We do five trials, which are then averaged. The Curve took an average of 0.95 seconds to open the e-mail entry form. This is incredibly fast, as evidenced by the extremely high score it received. Opening a new e-mail from the home screen is as easy as three clicks: once on the trackball to open up the message icon, the menu button, and again on the trackball, since the menu automatically highlights "Compose E-mail" when opened.
Please note that this time can be affected by wherever you last left your cursor, since it doesn't reset its position to a default when you return to the home screen. For our tests, we reset the cursor to the top left position in each menu for each trial. In this particular case, it's exactly where the cursor needs to be, which helped our time.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 0.95 | 21.05 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 1.76 | 11.36 |
| HTC Mogul | 6.22 | 3.22 |
| Motorola Q | 5.10 | 3.92 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 2.66 | 7.52 |
| Helio Ocean | 2.10 | 9.5 |
E-mail Usability (10.0)
The Curve's e-mail software is typical BlackBerry fare. Each account is given its own icon on the home screen. The Curve uses the tiny trackball introduced in the Pearl, which is used to scroll around messages. Clicking the ball will bring up a basic menu (forward, reply to all, delete, full menu), while the menu button, surprisingly enough, brings up a more detailed one. One of the more useful features is the space button, which pages down the e-mail. This is incredibly useful, as even on the highest setting the trackball can't scroll very fast.
One thing we would really have liked to see is a "select all" feature, for easy inbox emptying. People who prefer tidy inboxes won't have to spend a lot of time see-sawing between "Delete" and the enter key, however, as holding shift and scrolling will highlight.
Supported IM Services (1.0)
Fresh from the box, the Curve only supports Blackberry's proprietary BlackBerry Messenger system . You can only use this IM service to send messages to other BlackBerry users, but then again, it's free. The Curve also supports a few other, slightly obscure IM clients, such as Yahoo! Messenger (for BlackBerry), Google Talk (for BlackBerry), IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office Communicator, and Novell GroupWise Messenger. None of these come built in, however, so they don't get any points; you ahve to download and isntall the clients yourself.
MMS Support (6.0)
MMS functionality is a bit better in this BlackBerry than in the others, offering a few more options for sending MMS messages. You can attach a picture from the photo album, or straight from the camera. You can create an MMS in your inbox too. Just about the only relevant place you can't send an MMS is from inside an SMS. This is a bit disappointing since many phones (though not older BlackBerry models) allow you to turn an SMS into an MMS. The Curve also automatically resizes images to MMS size, which, depending on the user, can be a good or bad thing.
SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
This score is based on the range of smiley faces the test phone can interpret. Unfortunately, the Curve can't replace a ":)" or ":(" with its graphical equivalent.
SMS/MMS Ease of Use (7.0)
Sending MMS and SMS messages are simple with the Curve. They have their own inbox on the home screen, and you scroll through it much like the Curve's e-mail inbox. The menu inside the inbox will allow you to create a new SMS or MMS message. You can either type in a number to send the message to, or select from your contacts. Though the Curveisn't as flexible at SMS and MMS messaging as some phones (like the Treo or Ocean, which allow you to change from SMS to MMS messages easily), it does offer solid functionality that's easy to use.
Time to a New SMS Message (5.08)
To test how easy it is to enter a new SMS message, we time how long it takes to bring up a new SMS entry form from the home screen. We do five trials, which we then average. The Curve's average lap time was 1.97 seconds, which is impressive. Like e-mail, entering a new SMS message is just a few simple clicks; the only difference is that you need to scroll down a bit in the menu to get the new SMS form to open.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 1.97 | 5.08 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 3.82 | 2.62 |
| HTC Mogul | 5.46 | 1.83 |
| Motorola Q | 5.10 | 1.96 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 1.40 | 7.14 |
| Helio Ocean | 3.10 | 3.23 |
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