I’ve gone and done it. I’ve gone out and physically purchased a RIM Blackberry Curve 8330 for the Sprint network. My Palm Centro died a sad, early, and unfortunate death, so I needed a phone and the Pre wasn’t out yet and the 8330 just looked so nice… sitting over there… Anyway. I got it. I plopped down the cash, let them set it up, and walked out the door. So, what you get is a brief hands-on look at the RIM Blackberry 8330 before I write up a complete and exhaustive review. 

The RIM Blackberry 8330 is exactly the same form factor as the first Curve, but so much more deliciously engineered. Having dealt with (and frankly despised) the Pearl line from my days as a BES admin, I was surprised at how light it is. Its also, according to RIM, the smallest full QWERTY Blackberry on the market, and I have no reason to disbelieve them. Its sleekly designed, fits very nicely in the hand, has nice rubber grips along the sides, and the controls fall nicely to… er… thumb?

The screen is very bright and clear, too. Images are very clear and the camera/vidcam features look good with little stutter in “viewfinder” mode. One of the cool new features of the camera is that it can add geotagging data to the images you take, which should work with iPhoto ’09. The GPS works very well, as Sprint Navigation is included with the Blackberry BIS package for this handset. It acted kind of stupid in the Target parking lot down in OC, but it recalculated quickly enough once on the streets. 

The phone came with a 1GB microSD card, which I promptly replaced with an 8GB microSDHC card. I was a bit peeved that I had remove the battery to get to the card slot, but the handset does work in Mass Storage mode, so its not that much of a pain. Since RIM software is all Windows, I tested it with Windows Media Player and it synced up in no time over USB 2.0. I tested it on an Averatec Buddy netbook (MSI Wind U100 clone) running Windows XP SP3 and WMP11, and it was very quick. 

Battery life seems to be good early on, but nowhere near as good as older BBs. Firing up the GPS or watching Sprint TV really gives it a workout, draining the power fast. I try to keep at least one or two Kensington USB battery packs charged up and on hand, though I don’t know what that adds to the 8330′s life yet. My guess after four days seems like a full charge could last a couple of days with regular calling, email checking, and other standard BB usage. 

So far, with multimedia, I’ve only tested audio, and it seems to do quite well. I wish the controls were better thought out, but they do get the job done. The headphones which come with the handset are quite good. I’d say that they’re akin to Apple’s standard iPod canal pluggers. I hooked it up to my Insignia (Best Buy) stereo Bluetooth headphones and it works, though the sound quality of those headphones isn’t the greatest. 

Overall, I’m super pleased with my new 8330. Hell, I’d better be, since I paid cash money on the barrelhead for it. One thing that bothered me, though, is how easy it seems to activate the voice recognition. Even when I changed the left-side quick key to Messaging, it would still kick in every once in a while. I’m not sure what’s doing it, but when it does the phone locks up. Otherwise, I’m very impressed with the quality advances RIM has made. Of course, that’s what I’m saying right this minute

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