BlackBerry Curve 9360 review

High-end specs in a budget BlackBerry shell

BlackBerry Curve 9360
Ultra-thin, flash, voice recognition, but it's not an iPhone

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Chances are, if you're grabbing a BlackBerry, you're doing it because you're big on messaging, rather than just phone calls. And it's all in here: every option you could shake a stick at.

Firstly, email. Be it BIS or BES, you're home and dry with the BlackBerry Curve 9360, which operates as most BlackBerrys do when it comes to messaging: brilliantly (we'll skim over the events of October here.)

BlackBerry curve 9360

You can customise how you want it to look and have your emails separate from BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) or from your SMS, or throw the whole lot together into a consolidated inbox. Heck, Twitter and Facebook messages will join in the party too if you want them.

BlackBerry curve 9360

It's not any different to what we've seen before, but once again everything just seems to work. And you can add as many third party solutions as you want, from Windows Live Messenger to WhatsApp and Google Talk.

BlackBerry curve 9360

BBM is one of the big selling points here: secure, encrypted instant messaging that enables you to keep in touch a lot easier (and cheaper) than SMS, which is why it's so popular with younger folk.

BlackBerry curve 9360

RIM knows how much of a deal-breaker BBM is, which is why it's recently been looking at porting the software over to Android too. For now though, it's BlackBerry-only, and with the BlackBerry Curve 9360 - and the likelihood of it being popular with youngsters - it's one of this handset's biggest draws.

BlackBerry curve 9360 review

Typing on the BlackBerry Curve 9360 is an easy enough affair. The physical keyboard lacks the size of the Bold 9900 and is of the typical Curve variety, which is more spaced out and clicks a lot more. BlackBerrys first got their name because the keys looked like the seeds from the BlackBerry fruit.

And here, that's more apparent than ever. Big shovels of hands may have issues with the small keys, but for the majority of us it's perfectly usable.

BlackBerry curve 9360

BlackBerry's own Social Feeds app is also present, although we still don't get why you'd want to use this. It's not separate software - it just takes you into the relevant app when you click on anything. Still, at least you can ignore it if you want (which is what we did.)

BlackBerry curve 9360