BlackBerry Curve review - Organizer
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Mark Brezinski Published on August 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Synchronization (6.33)
The BlackBerry Desktop Software that comes with the Curve is the software all BlackBerry phones come packaged with. Though not as aesthetically pleasing as, say, Windows Mobile Device Manager, the Curve's Desktop Manager does what it's supposed to and sports a simple interface.
As is typical of BlackBerry phones, you can sync up pretty much everything you'd want. Contacts (with photos), tasks, calendar appointments, and notes can all be synchronized. You can do this via the in-box USB cable, one of your own standard mini-USB cables, or over Bluetooth.
The Curve can sync up to Outlook or BlackBerry's own Stop Manager. If you have a Mac, you can download a tfree hird-party program called PocketMac that does much the same thing. You can find it here.
Alerts (7.0)
The Curve's alert system is simultaneously thorough and ineffective. The Curve does allow you to customize a fair amount. You can set an event to start or end at any time, and there is even an "All Day Event" button. You can set duration, time zone, a reminder, and recurrence. There are fields for subject, location, and even a spot for notes. You can also set how you want the chunk of time to be reflected on your calendar (busy, free, tentative, out of office). Another neat feature is that the Curve will remind you about conflicting appointments in the appointment entry dialogue, going so far as to let you know if there's even an adjacent appointment, lest you forget to schedule in travel time.
There are a few additional options too, located under each volume profile. Some users will like this additional level of customizability, but most users will simply be annoyed they have to keep track of two separate groups of settings. In a profile, you can change what ring your alerts will use, or set them to vibrate. We would have liked to see this option available in the Calendar menu, to perhaps allow for audible differentiation between business and personal appointments.
You can also set how many times the phone will ring/vibrate, up to a paltry maximum of three times. After those few chirps or shakes, the Curve will just give up. There is a "Repeat Notification" setting, but all it will do is make the LED flash red after you've missed your alert. Don't expect the screen to turn on and show some boisterous, eye-catching animation either; if it's off, it's off.
Although it does very little to alert you at the time specified, it would be hard to miss your appointment if you are routinely using the Curve. After you fail to notice the Curve's alert, an open/dismiss/snooze dialogue box will be the first thing you see when you turn your phone back on. This dialogue will also show the appointment's name, location, start time, and end time. The snooze option will cause the alarm to go off again in five minutes, an increment which cannot be changed.
While the Curve offers a lot of customization for its alerts, it does have a problem with actually alerting its user. Most normal phones have much better alert functionality, either continuing to ring/vibrate and flash until you choose to snooze/ignore the alarm, or at least alerts more than three times.
For a phone focused on business users, the Curve really doesn't try hard to keep its users up to date.
Over the Air PIM Sync (4.0)
The Curve can synch contacts and calendar entries out of the box using the Blackberry Server or Exchange server. The appropriate download will allow it to sync with other services like Yahoo! or Google.
Address Book
Adding Contacts (7.97)
For testing how easy it is to add a new contact, we time how long it takes to input one of our test contacts into the address book, which consists of a phone number and a name. We do five different trials, each with different sets of information, to better estimate what a user could realistically expect. The times are then averaged.
The Curve took an average of 12.54 seconds to input a contact. You can enter in a contact through the address book's menu, but it's quicker to just type in the phone number and select "Add to Address Book" from the Phone menu. This is a very, very fast time, made possible by the QWERTY keyboard and simple menu interface.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 12.54 | 8.67 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 16.30 | 6.13 |
| HTC Mogul | 14.70 | 6.80 |
| Motorola Q | 17.00 | 5.88 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 17.77 | 5.65 |
| Helio Ocean | 21.24 | 4.71 |
Sorting/Search (6.5)
You can search through contacts based on title (Ms., Dr., etc.), first name, last name, or company. You can search for fragments of each, but only if those fragments are the first few characters in sequence. For example, you can search for Sarah Vernor, director of admissions of the University of Somewhere by typing in, "Sara Ver Direct Some". There is also a filter in the Main menu which allows you to only display certain groups.
Fields (3.8)
The Curve has a great many fields: 19 in total. In addition to every sort of number, you can enter in home and work addresses, a picture, a custom ringtone, up to four different IM names, a website url, and even jot down some notes about him or her. Other phones have more fields, such as birthday, but there are more than enough fields here for most users.
Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
The Curve has a very simple speed dial system. All you have to do is hold down a key on the QWERTY keyboard for a few seconds on the home screen, and a dialogue box pops up allowing you to assign a contact to the key. The Curve's voice command application was quite good, able to recognize even the most difficult of our test names. There isn't a voice tag option, but this absence is covered by the voice command's accuracy.
Calendar
Adding Calendar Items (22.57)
For this test, we time how long it takes to create a simple calendar entry, starting from the home screen. The Curve managed to jot down an appointment in a blistering 4.43 seconds. This is an incredibly quick time, as evidenced by its score. Adding an appointment is easy with the QWERTY keys and the trackball. Our test item is just entering in "Lunch" for tomorrow at noon, with a reminder 15 minutes prior. On the Curve, it's as easy as clicking on the calendar, rolling up/down (depending on the current time) to noon, rolling right to get to tomorrow, and QWERTY-ing in the description. The Curve adds a 15 minute reminder automatically, so hitting return completes the entry; it's not even necessary to formally open up the new appointment entry dialogue, though doing so is just about as fast. We found that scrolling through days and times with the trackball was a lot faster than repetitive clicks on a d-pad, and offered better control than a jog dial or scroll wheel.
Time to enter in a calendar item can be affected by the current time. When you open the calendar, the current time is highlighted, which means if you want to schedule an appointment the next day at that time, you don't have to navigate up/down to select the time you want. Conversely, if it's at night and you need to schedule an appointment for early the next day, you'll have to scroll a bit further. Also, as with all timing tests, the time could be slowed depending on how far away your cursor is from the icon you want, since exiting an application will just leave that icon highlighted; there isn't a default position the cursor will return to.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 4.43 | 22.57 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 6.92 | 14.45 |
| HTC Mogul | 7.22 | 13.85 |
| Motorola Q | 19.10 | 5.24 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 12.18 | 8.21 |
| Helio Ocean | 24.20 | 4.13 |
Calendar Views (4.67)
There are four views in the Curve's calendar application: month, week, day, and agenda.
The default view is day, and shows an hour by hour breakdown of all scheduled events. The default setting displays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the hour, but will change if an appointment has an off-hour start or end time. The hours displayed can also be changed in settings. The times are listed on the left side, appointment descriptions are listed on the right, and the duration of an appointment is represented by a red bracket around its start and end time. You can also see appointments scheduled through the week by scrolling to the left and right.
The week view shows a grid with the days of the week along the top, and time along the left side. Appointments are represented by vertical boxes. Scrolling over a box will show the appointment's title, location, and time frame; clicking it will switch to the day view.
The month view is close to useless, as all it does is display a small box for each appointment in that day. As in the week menu, clicking a day will switch to day view.
The agenda displays all events that have been scheduled, blocking out appointments and free time.
Fields (11.0)
There are a good selection of fields available for customization on the Curve. You can enter subject, location, start/end/duration, reminder, recurrence, and notes. You can also enter in a different time zone, which was a thoughtful addition for those who travel a lot. Lastly, you can choose to invite a contact to a calendar appointment.
To Do/Tasks
Adding To Do/Task (8.38)
For this test, we determine how easily you can add a task by timing how long it takes to create one, starting at the home screen. We do five trials, and average out our times. The Curve took an average of 11.93 seconds. This doesn't blow its competition out of the water, but it's fast nonetheless. The Curve's time was once again helped out by its keyboard.
The standard Curve timing caveat applies here as well: the cursor doesn't have a set place it resets to when you return to the home screen, so you may get different times if your cursor happens to wind up farther away from the Applications icons. Also, if you already have tasks scheduled, making a new one will require you to navigate the Main menu a bit, but this is certainly not a cumbersome detour. On average, we found it only added a few tenths of a second to our time.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 11.93 | 8.38 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 18.80 | 5.32 |
| HTC Mogul | 16.02 | 6.24 |
| Motorola Q | N/A: Unable to create tasks | 0 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 12.90 | 7.75 |
| Helio Ocean | N/A: Unable to create tasks | 0 |
To Do/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
The Curve allows you to assign categories to your tasks, which allows you to filter through your tasks. You can also sort your tasks according to subject, priority, due date, or status. This is typical functionality for a BlackBerry device, but impressive nonetheless.
Fields (10.0)
The Curve has quite a few fields for task creation. You can title your tasks, give them a priority, due date, set a reminder, assign a category, and jot down some notes. There are also two other, less common fields. One is "Status," which lets you pick what state the task is currently in, such as Not Started, In Progress, Completed, Waiting, or Deferred. We weren't sure who needed to remind themselves a task was "In Progress," but it's a nice addition nonetheless. Another nice feature is the ability to set a time zine, since business-types tend to travel. The last field is recurrence, which will show up when you set a due date.
Notes
Adding Notes (6.02)
We time how long it takes to add a note to see how relatively easy the task is. We start the time at the home screen, and end when we save our sample note. We do five trials and take their average. The Curve took about 8.31 seconds to enter our test note, which is fast. The QWERTY keyboard is helpful, and the notepad is easy to find in the Applications folder.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 8.31 | 6.02 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 13.12 | 3.81 |
| HTC Mogul | 12.56 | 3.98 |
| Motorola Q | N/A: Unable to create notes | 0 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 8.30 | 6.02 |
| Helio Ocean | 16.06 | 3.11 |
Note Interface (7.5)
The note interface is really simple: title at the top, text underneath. You can spell-check your notes as well as assign a category. You can also search through your notes, but only by title and not by content; the search is actually the same one used for contacts. While including search functionality for notes is always welcome, the LG Chocolate VX8550 had a much more powerful search, where you can search for fragments of the title or body of the text. Most phones don't even have a search function, however, so the Curve's notepad is still in good standing.
Note Formatting (0.0)
As mentioned elsewhere, font size and style is controlled globally via the Settings menu. There is no way to change either font size or style from within the notepad program.
Voice Memo (1.0)
The Curve follows in the strange BlackBerry tradition of only allowing you to record voice notes for others. Most normal phones have a voice memo program, let alone smart phones, but the Curve only lets you record your own voice if you're attaching it in an MMS. The inclusion of such a limited voice recording program is baffling.
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