BlackBerry Curve review - Multimedia
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Mark Brezinski Published on August 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (4.13)
This test represents how easy it is to get a song playing. We start timing at the home screen, and stop when a song begins to play. We do five trials and average the results. The Curve managed to get a song going in 4.84 seconds. This is decent for a business device, but handsets with a dedicated music button can get a song playing in less than half the time. Navigating through the menus only required clicks, no movement, but the menus lagged a bit. Unlike some phones, you can't navigate through the lag; clicking repeatedly just increased the time it took to open the menu.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 4.84 | 4.13 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 5.48 | 3.65 |
| HTC Mogul | 6.06 | 3.30 |
| Motorola Q | 8.10 | 2.47 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 3.10 | 6.45 |
| Helio Ocean | 5.20 | 3.85 |
Dedicated Music Controls (1.0)
The only dedicated music control on the Curve is the volume rocker. Other than that, there aren't any buttons outside the media player that can control your music.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (5.8)
The Curve offers some basic music software -- nothing fancy, but decent enough. You can choose to view your music by title, artist, album, or genre. Within each of these categories is an active search, which is certainly a welcome feature. We were also pleased to see Idv3, iTunes, and WMP tags were supported. The Curve does support playlists, but doesn't allow you to create or edit them. The Curve also doesn't offer more advanced features like an equalizer.
There isn't a dedicated shortcut for the media player as a default, but you can opt to reassign one of the convenience keys to it. If you don't, you can just access the media player via the media icon on the homescreen, then select the music option under that menu.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The Curve doesn't allow you to download full versions of songs in the AT&T store, just ringtones.
Streaming (0.0)
The Curve doesn't support streaming audio in MP3, Windows Media, or Real Media formats. You can, however, subscribe to XM Radio Mobile for $8.99 per month. As this is a pay service, however, we do not award it points.
Podcast Support (0.0)
Sadly, the Curve cares not for podcasts. There is no dedicated software for managing or listening to podcasts.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
There's really only one way to sync your Curve up with your PC, and that's by connecting it as a mass storage device and using Windows Media Player's functionality. The Curve's Desktop Manager allows you to sync up organization files, but strangely not media. You can use the Desktop Manager's Media Manager, but that just opens up some Roxio program that offers about as much functionality as using Windows Explorer, if not less.
Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The Curve can play AAC, MP3, and WAV files. It does not handle Real or Org Vorbis files, which isn't really a surprise. What is a bit disappointing is that it doesn't support DRM-protected files.
Music Interruption (10.0)
This category refers to a phone's reaction to an incoming call when there is music playing. The Curve does exactly what we expect in this category, which is to pause the song for the call, then resume it once the call has ended. We would have liked to see the phone fade the music back in, however, but this feature is pretty much only present in the iPhone. Again, great functionality from a business-oriented device.
Video
Video Software Access (3.24)
This test represents how easy it is to access the video software. We time how long it takes to get a video playing, starting our stopwatch at the home screen. We do five trials, which we average. The Curve took 6.17 seconds on average to start playing the video, which is on the slow side of average. Most of this time was spent waiting for menus to load, as navigating with the trackball is fast and easy.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 6.17 | 3.24 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 5.48 | 3.65 |
| HTC Mogul | 6.06 | 3.30 |
| Motorola Q | 8.10 | 2.47 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 3.10 | 6.54 |
| Helio Ocean | 5.20 | 3.85 |
Video Controls (5.0)
Just about all playback controls are available outside of the Main menu. The volume keys perform their namesake duties and play, pause, and stop are handled by clicking the trackball on the appropriate buttons. You can also fast forward and rewind with the trackball by highlighting the progress indicator, clicking on it, and moving the trackball to the left or right; clicking again will set the indicator to its new position. SYM will bring up Full Screen mode, which means the video will remain the same size, but the interface will be replaced by a black frame. Enter is a play/pause shortcut. There is no previous or next track feature, unfortunately.
Video Software & Organization (1.5)
The Curve really doesn't have much in the way of organizing your videos. It does include the active search, and sorts your files by title. The menu button doesn't offer anything; selecting Options will just open the Media Options menu, which does not actually contain any settings for the music or video player. There isn't a previous or next track command to skip around your videos, either. Your videos also can't play in the background, as they stop as soon as you exit the player. Normally running video in the background isn't optimal since you can't see the picture, but it would be nice if you really only care about audio playback, or don't mind missing a few minutes to write an e-mail.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
Synchronizing video is carried out the same was as with music: you connect the Curve as a mass storage device and use Windows Media Player. You could also use The Curve's Desktop Manager to open up a Roxio drag and drop application, but since it doesn't actually offer sync or a coherent interface it doesn't receive any points.
Video Formats (3.5)
The Curve supports H263 and MP4 encoded 3GPP files, which was nice to see. It doesn't support advanced MP4 profiles, however, and only plays back the sound. It also only played back sound for our test QuickTime file. Also amongst the unsupported are WMV, Real, and Flash files. We would have liked to see better video support.
Video DRM (0.0)
As with music, the Curve doesn't support DRM.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We test plaback smoothness by playing back videos of different bitrates. The Curve managed to play all our test files, which range from 48kbps to 768kbps. This means the Curve will play back all your high-quality video.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Curve doesn't support any online video downloading service.
Video Streaming (unscored)
We don't score video streaming because a set of standards has yet to be developed. We do have a few test sites that provide streaming video, but the Curve was unable to play back streaming 3GP or WMV files.
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