You can handle this fruit

BlackBerry’s new Curve 9380 smart phone is the first in the Curve series that comes with a touch screen.

It makes the 9380 an affordable smart phone for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) fans who want a screen that is larger than the BlackBerrys with full QWERTY keyboard.

The 9380 features new BBM and, since the phone runs on the new BlackBerry 7 operating system, the BBM application and service has now been connected with other applications, especially social network applications like Foursquare and Facebook Messages.

The Curve 9380 looks stylish and sleek with black front, silver edge and curved top and bottom.

It comes with 3.2-inch screen with 480x360-pixel resolution capable of displaying 24-bit colours. It is powered by an 800MHz CPU and equipped with 512 megabytes of RAM plus 512MB storage on board, expandable by up to 32GB with a microSD card.

The smart phone has a 5-megapixel camera – good quality for a mobile phone and able to capture 640x480-pixel video.

Another positive is that the Curve 9380 supports all 3G connections in Thailand and also has Wi-Fi connections. It also supports Near Field Communication (NFC), which allows the phone to read smart tags or link up to other Curve 9380s and other NFC-enabled devices.

The fluid BlackBerry 7 OS allows the Curve 9380 to run with good performance. The new operating system also brings an enhanced browser that provides a significantly faster, more fluid surfing experience. The browser includes a new JIT (just in time) JavaScript compiler to improve load-time speed of pages and offers optimised HTML5 performance for excellent gaming and video experiences.

The 9380 comes with built-in support for Augmented Reality. With the Wikitude Augmented Reality application, users can find nearby BBM contacts in real-time, read reviews about restaurants close to them, or get the story behind an interesting landmark or point of interest.

I tested the Curve 9380 on a 3G network and found that it worked fine in checking my Facebook updates, and allowed me to check my e-mails and update my Facebook status fast. Web pages were also loaded speedily.

The touch screen was responsive but the fixed buttons at the bottom below the display, like the home and back buttons, needed a little bit more pressure to activate – apparently because BlackBerry has tried to prevent you from pressing them by accident.

The Curve 9380 also has Facebook and Twitter apps pre-installed to help you keep in touch with your social networkers on the go.

BlackBerry’s Curve 9380 is on the shelves for Bt10,900.

 

        Key specs

_ Software: BlackBerry 7 OS

_ CPU: 800 MHz

_ Camera: 5MP camera, flash, geo-tagging, face detection, image stabilisation, scene modes, 4x digital zoom, VGA video recording (640 x 480)

_ Display: 3.2-inch HVGA+ touch screen, 480 X 360-pixel resolution at 188ppi

_ Memory: 512MB onboard memory, expandable up to 32GB via microSD card

_ Network: Tri-Band UMTS/HSPA Networks: UMTS: 2100/1900/ 850/800 MHz and 2100/ 1700/900 MHz; Quad Band GSMGPRS/EDGE Networks: 1900/1800/900/850 MHz

_ Size (L x W x D): 109mm x 60mm x 11.2mm

_ Weight: 98g