Ratings by Ringtone

The battery on my Pearl 8100 died so I decided to replace it with a later model. I was excited about the Curve since it has a QWERTY keyboard. Over time, I missed this from my previous 8700c because I use my Blackberry to send several emails a day. I was also looking forward to the fact the device has GPS, a better camera including flash.

The Curve is an excellent device like all the other Blackberries I have owed. It works pretty flawlessly for email, web, etc. It’s very lightweight. Overall, I think the Curve is better than the Pearl.

I’ve raved before about how great the Blackberries are, and nothing in the Curve has changed my opinion. Rather than repeat all that I like about BB here are some areas of improvement for this device you might not be aware of if you are looking to move up to one.

The 8700c came with a nice holster. The Curve doesn’t come with such a holster so I you enjoy the holster like I did, you have to buy a 3rd party one. Of course, the Pearl doesn’t come with a cool holster either.

The Curve has a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack so you can listen to music on it. Although, this sounds cool, I preferred the standard telephone headset jack instead because without this you have to use a Bluetooth headset. I have a good one, but sometimes it is also useful to use a wired headset. And my existing Blackberry wired headsets are now obsolete. I don’t listen to music on my Curve because I can listen to music better on my iPod or laptop.

The GPS is not as useful as thought it would be. To use Telenav that comes with the Curve you have to pay an extra $10 a month so I haven’t signed up for that. Its not clear to me to what extend apps like Google maps depend on the built in GPS or are =just using triangulation which doesn’t require it. I have seem friends of mine bring up Google maps on their phones without GPS and I don’t see an big benefit in the Curve's GPS if Google is even using it.

The Facebook mobile application for Blackberry is simple but also very useful for uploading photos and sending Facebook messages. I think Google maps, and Google sync (if you use Google calendar) are fairly essential. I also install YGo! and Beyond411 and while they are cool and have some utility are just not essential.

On the topic of third party software, I have some surprising battery life problems with the Curve. It is not uncommon to turn on the device and find the battery totally drained. I believe this may be due to some of the applications above which if left running totally drain the battery. The only way around this is to make sure to exit all these 3rd party apps after using them, and to strategically leave chargers at both home and work.

The Blackberry browser is fairly capable although I’ve realized that that CSS, Javascript, and tables are turned off by default. If you want to get more an iphone browsing experience you can also install Opera Mini. I have it, but I haven’t found a big need to use it.

I have AT&T and I have an AT&T specific Curve complaint. The Curve has a Yahoo! Messenger application which is very cool, but AT&T will not allow it to work on their network. There are forum posts on how to hack you Curve to get it to work, but what a hassle. So if you can use a Curve on a network other than AT&T, you’ll have a better experience than me.

The Sprint LX 160 by LG is a basic clamshell design, digital dual band phone. It's light and easy to hold. For basic phone however it is very complete. It has Bluetooth and wireless Internet capability. It also has a jack for a wired headset. It has a primary and secondary screen. Although the screens are small, they're easy to read.

The interface on the phone was simple and straightforward to use. The buttons have a good feel to them. One nice feature of the phone is the dedicated TEXT button which makes it easy to send text messages directly without having to navigate any menus. I wish some higher end phones had that. Unfortunately, the LX 160 doesn't have a camera.

The phone works with some of the Sprint Vision services. And while not unique to the LX 160, I tried out Sprint’s Voice SMS with the LX 160. Using Sprint’s Voice SMS, I was able to send an SMS message with a voice attachment to another phone not on the Sprint network (AT&T) as a test. When I received the SMS on the other phone, the text message contained a phone number to dial. When I dialed that phone number, I heard the voice message and I was even able to reply. This Voice SMS is handy when you want to send a voice mail to someone but not call and risk disrupting them because they might pick up the phone. More carriers should offer this as a service.

I'm going to give this phone a relatively high score for completeness and value as an entry-level phone. In my opinion perhaps it could be a little thinner. The phone comes with a charger.

The Sprint music by LG is a really amazing phone. It's chock-full of entertainment in a relatively small package. The phone is about the same size and weight as a Motorola RAZR. The screen is bright. Overall, I was really impressed with everything that is offered by this phone. It’s extremely complete.

As the name implies, it plays music. The MUZIQ has a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack on one side and also has a micro SD card slot you can add additional memory for songs. The phone only comes with a 64 MB card so you'll most likely have to upgrade that if you intend to store any serious about music. Amazingly the phone comes with an FM transmitter so you can play music through any FM stereo. It has advanced stereo Bluetooth headset capability.

On the phone, there's a music store where you can browse through featured music categories of what's hot you can also search for music. The store is powered by Groove Mobile. You can listen to samples, browse the cover artwork, and purchase a song for $.99 that is then automatically downloaded directly to your phone using Sprint's 3G network. There are also some free tracks available. Overall I found the performance of the online store to be pretty good, and only once was a store not available. It also comes with Sprint Music Manager Software which requires marks of Windows XP service pack 2 or later.

There's a music player where you can organize your music and create play lists. You can see your songs by artist or genre. The MUZIQ has a navigation control on the cover along with a second screen so when you close it you can still play your music is playing. When music is not playing, and the second screen shows the date and time or caller ID information when incoming call is coming in. It's easy to adjust the volume using a rocker switch on the side of the flip and the phone can put out a fairly level of loud sound.

The MUZIQ has a 1.3 megapixel camera and video camcorder. It's nice that it includes flash as well although I had problems in getting the flash to work. Also awesome is that you can watch live TV on the phone. They are channels such as CNN, Fox Sports, The Weather Channel he ABC News, Comedy Central, etc. This is powered by MobiTV. I shot a short video of watching TV on the phone so you get a feeling for the experience.

The phone also plays games and comes with demos of about five different games. It has vibration. It would've been nice if they'd come with one or two fully licensed games. You can also download ring tones (called ringers) screensavers, and themes using Sprint Power Vision.

The phone comes with Sprint on Demand services for news, weather, sports, movies, money and other information. I found the on-demand application interesting but it often took some time to update all sets of difficulty setting and having it remember my default locations for weather and music and movies.

The interface on the phone is polished and attractive. It's got pretty much anything you would imagine a modern phone including a web browser, call history, contacts, notes, tasks, and calendar applications. If anything it's probably a bit overwhelming for most people. These applications however our basic like for example a contacts list will only allow you to store up to 500 entries and five phone numbers per entry. This is probably more than enough for more non-business users. And sometimes the software got a little bit too much in the way with annoying confirmation dialogs like, “Do you want to exit this application?" So while the phone definitely has a time of things to offer, for me the biggest challenge was just to get to them all, and how much time you have to burn being entertained.

The phone comes with a data cable, charger, and a headset for listening to music plus instruction manuals and a CD with the Spring Music Manger store.