BlackBerry Curve 8300 (silver, AT&T)

Pros: Ergonomically perfect

Cons: Your thumb will still be reaching for the wheel and your phone carrier will not be on the learning "curve" yet...

Summary: Looking to bring your thumb back into the fold of your hand to play with the other fingers? Have you ever thought of using your device with your left hand? Have you ever wanted voice dialing? Have you used the Ethernet feature of the 8703e and liked it? Have you wished that your screen had the resolution of your pc monitor? Didn't you always wish you could scroll faster through your email list and delete multiple emails instead of one at a time? Did you want your device to be a quad phone when you travel abroad? Did you ever wish it was slimmer and sleeker, and had a better holster instead of that God awful plastic geek holster?! If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are in for a treat!

Finally, RIM has offered up some useful improvements. Having the SD micro card for an additional 2 gigs of memory is a nice to have as well. Now I can watch a slide show of my little baby daughter while I am traveling. Very cool.

So the basics:

Email and texting: Has improved because the track ball is so much easier to work with. Having the dedicated convenience key to assign an application too was good planning too. Very convenient indeed to press the key on the side to bring up an application. Spell check is a must have as well.

The phone: Easier to hold and lighter makes it much more comfortable. Clearly the quad-band is great when you’re over seas. The voice dialing is a nice gadget when your hands are busy. Sounds good, nice reception, great speaker phone. And a host of sexy things like ringtones and mp3 tones if you care for that stuff.


Tethered Modem: Had it in the 8703e and loved it, used it all the time with my laptop. Great connectivity, and save $ on buying a card or subscribing to the Starbucks ISP.

Lots of other fun features to explore and use like the expandable memory card you can insert the map, the camera if you care for that, and IM if you use that too.

All in all, a huge improvement, and must have. Get one and you'll never use the wheel again!