Dial 0 for Opinion: the BlackBerry Curve wants you to be late

The Curve represents BlackBerry's first foray into the market of "phones that are totally indifferent toward their users and users' schedules." As BlackBerry's pitch for the bargain bin smart phone market, the Curve is marketed toward business users who need robust e-mail and organization software. Ironically, the hectic lives the Curve was made for are the very ones it will fail the most, because the alert function doesn't alert you very well. Our full review of the Curve is coming shortly, but there was one thing that disappointed me; the alert functionality. It wasn't the bevy of customizable options that was disappointing; it was the Curve's inability to literally get the user's attention.

To put the Curve into perspective, most phones keep up an alert for about a minute before they auto-snooze. Five minutes later they'll alert for another sixty seconds. What the Curve does is allow the user to pick exactly how long you want the alarm to sound off for. Instead of letting you set the number of rings/vibrations by minute, however, the Curve makes you choose the actual number of times it will ring or vibrate. This would be a great option if you could set the number somewhere in the low 40s, but instead the Curve tops out at three. Three. That means after three beeps or shakes, the Curve gives up permanently -- no auto-snooze for another three phone-yelps minutes later. After giving you what amounts to a couple light taps on the shoulder, the Curve heads off to the couch to eat Doritos. It's the phone equivalent of that lazy roommate you had in college who'd jot down messages on a paper towel, use it to wipe buffalo sauce from his hands, then leave it in his empty pizza box on the common room table.

The Curve is also incredibly insensitive about missed appointments. Once you open your BlackBerry and deal with the horrific realization that your meeting with the CEO began about an hour ago, you would undoubtedly open the calendar entry, hoping in vain there'll be a note attached saying, "OK to show up 100 minutes late." When you do, not only will you find no such note, but the Curve will display the following in the conflict notification field: "This appointment occurs in the past." Not only are you about to get fired because of the Curve's lethargic alert functionality, but it delivers the news with this tauntingly contemptuous message. It's like you can feel it expressing mock concern while you read. Until phones can actually register facial expressions, "This appointment occurs in the past" is as close as a handset will get to a sarcastic smirk. It wouldn't even be so bad if they'd used the appropriate tense and claimed it occurred in the past. The present tense makes it seem like you could still make the appointment, as though "the past" is within easy commuting distance. Stupid smug phone.

The other explanation would be that the Curve actually thinks the inexorable march of time is a two-way street. If this is the case, BlackBerry is certainly getting a jump on things, as this is the first and only handset prepared for when we develop time-travel capabilities. Until science can catch up with the Curve, however, we wouldn't recommend letting your time-sensitive alerts be handled by a device that thinks time is mutable. Sure this interpretation may seem a bit out there, but what else would explain why a business device isn't concerned with alerting you of deadlines?