Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 70
 The Best BlackBerry October 9, 2007
D. Golden (Jefferson, WI United States)
39 out of 40 found this review helpful
It has been a very long time since I have had so much fun with a smartphone. In fact I would include Palms, Jornadas, and the much missed and lamented Newton to the mix The BlackBerry 8320 was amazingly easy to get up and running with PocketMac. This isn't always the case with some other BB's. I was particularly pleased to discover that OperaMini installed and performed flawlessly. There has been much talk on various boards claiming that T-Mobile has deliberately set their phones so that they won't run third party apps. My experience says otherwise.
The fact that the 8320 has WiFi was a huge selling point for me. Our house is located in what may very will be the most cell signal challenged spot in the county. This BB instantly located our AirPort signal and I was finally able to to make calls from home, via the UMA feature. Emails load very quickly, and it performs like a real champ when it's time to send a SMS or MMS. The screen is very bright and clear. It does a reasonably good job in direct sunlight, but then I have yet to find a phone whose screen delivers as promised in that area. It is also very sharp and easy to see. That's quite an accomplishment considering my poor eyesight. The 2.0 megapixel camera is pretty useful with it's zoom and flash abilities. Under the right set of circumstances it's capable of producing some pretty good photos. It also has a SD card slot so that you can store larger media files, or whatever else your heart desires. The web browsing experience is better than you you might expect. It also features voice dialing. I was impressed liked the phone's search function. I don't know if it is typical of other BlackBerries, but I found it to be extremely fast and very useful.
The reception is better than other phones that I have owned in the past. It it also very good looking and feels solidly made. The rubberized sides give the 8320 an extra secure grip. Finally, the real QWERTY keyboard is (for me at last) a huge improvement over the Pearl's Sure Type system. The keys are raised and separated just enough to make typing quickly possible, and this from a serious klutz. It also has spell check as part of it's core programming. That is something I desperately need.
When the iPhone first hit the scene I felt left out of the party because T-Mobile wouldn't be a seller. But I have had nothing other than positive experiences with T-Mobile. I don't work for or have any financial interest in the company, so I can honestly state that T-Mobile tech support ranks right up there with Apple. So why should I surrender that comfort level to try someone new? Also, I have read many, many bad things about AT&T customer service.
The release of the BlackBerry 8320 has taken the sting out the iPhone's release, and has provided me with a wonderfully functional, enjoyable & reliable prosumer's dream of a BlackBerry.
 nice device, awful service November 20, 2007
N. Lyasheva (New York City)
34 out of 56 found this review helpful
This is a very neat device, but T-Mobile service is awful. T-Mobile coverage in lower Manhattan is patchy. My new device picked up no reception in my apartment, so I could neither receive nor make calls from home. Two of my colleagues who also live in Manhattan had the same problem with T-Mobile service and got out of their contracts only after threatening to sue T-Mobile for failure to provide the service. I kept the device for a month, during which T-Mobile representatives assured me the problem would be fixed. They also tried hard to sell me a "hot spot" router ($50) which would "put your own tower into your home", according to one T-Mobile representative. When I finally decided to cancel the service, I was hit with a $200 early cancellation fee. No amount of reasoning with T-Mobile would get me out of it. Besides, T-Mobile wouldn't unlock the blackberry device preventing me from using it with another provider. And T-Mobile wouldn't accept the device back for a refund, because T-Mobile didn't sell it directly (Amazon dealer did). It's been a miserable experience all around for me.BlackBerry 8320 Curve Titanium myFaves Phone (T-Mobile)
Go ahead, ditch your home phone. No, really....ditch it! February 27, 2008
Jim Alden (Hollywood, CA)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
Although this phone is not perfect (what phone is?), I'll explain why this might be the smartest purchase you can make. Three letters. UMA. This technology enables access to GSM and GPRS mobile services over a WIFI connection at home, your office or a hotspot such as Starbucks.
Although I live in the heart of Los Angeles, in my house, most mobile phones have problems with dropped calls, so like most people, I kept a home line. In my case Vonage. I always thought, if my cell worked really well, I would get rid of my home line. Only now will I do this and there are two reasons why.
First, the Hotspot service allows me to communicate through my high-speed Internet connection at home and those minutes are unlimited. Second reason is the most important: The call quality is better than my home line. When there are pauses in conversation, I have to ask "are you there?" because its so silent and clean. For me, 1000 minutes are fine since most of my calls are from home. Although I might use about 5000 minutes, I'll only be charged when I'm out and thats covered in my 1000 plan. The sound quality is the same for UMA connections or if I'm on their towers, clean. I also want to say, I just returned an iPhone. Although that is a great phone, ATT just didn't work for me. Dropped calls in my home killed it. That and the iPhone just always seemed too fragile to carry around. I give high marks for its usability, but now that I have the Curve, I can appreciate one thing for sure: Actual keys for texting are much easier than a touch screen.
As for features, I use the email push feature to notify me of anything in my gmail inbox, but downloaded googles package (free) that includes gmail and it works just great. Opera Mini browser also works well with this phone and the ball (mouse) is easy to get used to.
Most people considering this phone probably know the features, so I really wanted to comment on performance and I will say this. I have never had a phone/service that was so crystal clear and the fact that phone calls when I get home are free, how can you beat that? My personal break down is this: Old Vonage line monthly cost: $28. Old Sprint Cell account (before trying ATT), data and text was about $120 for a total of about $148.00
My new plan is $39 for 1000 min, $10 for Hotspot, $20 for full blackberry data and $10 for 1000 text messages. for a total of $79.00/mo. I no longer need my home line so I am saving about $70/mo.
To be fair, I will explain why i said its not perfect. Getting around the screen is better than most, but the iPhone does spoil you some. That being said, the pro's I've mentioned far outweigh the cons and at this point, all I miss about the iPhone is the toy-factor. But thats it. This phone, used as a phone, on the T-Mobile service blows them all away. I'm quite happy. Now I have to take it back and get it from Amazon since the deal here is way better than at the stores.
Here is a little money saving tip. If you start your call from a wifi connection and travel into the T-Mobile towers, even though you are now on cell towers, you are charged based on the calls origination. Meaning, you can drive for hours with no time charges. That being said, if you arrive home from a call originating on the cells, and it transfers to wifi, you are still going to be charged minutes, so hang up and begin a new call at this point.
Great phone. I'm very happy!!!
An iPhone killer? October 13, 2007
Larry Levine (Studio City, CA United States)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
OK - this phone is not perfect. But I am very happy I added two years to my sentence with TMO and upgraded to the curve. Not only has RIM improved on the blackberry interface but the ability to add a microSD card (I added 4gigs) makes it a great media player. Now, I know it does not come close to the interface of an iPod, but seriously who cares! Using Missing Sync I was able to sync a playlist directly from iTunes and a photo book directly from iPhoto! It supports stereo bluetooth (something the iPhone doesn't) and it has an actual keyboard which is something that comes in handy if you type a lot of SMS, emails or use the internet on your phone.
At home the curve connects to my home network and gets me off that painful EDGE network for data and VoIP. This has also come in handy in office buildings where reception on TMO's network was not adequate.
The only thing that really bugs me is that the camera is very slow taking pictures.
I highly recommend this device!
 Good phone, bad service December 3, 2007
Shih-chi Chiang (Princeton, NJ, USA)
22 out of 32 found this review helpful
The phone is good, if you didn't get a defect one.
Pro:
* All you need for a smart phone, you can rely on it for your daily management, calling quality is good, camera is not bad either.
Con:
* The first phone I got from T-Mobile is a defect one, it boot itself during the phone call. After checking at BlackberryForums, I found I am not the only one who got this issue. Fortunately T-Mobile did get me a replacement
* The service is bad. After I got my replacement, I noticed T-Mobile charged me two phones price and give me a outstanding balance of more than $500. I called T-Mobile three times and each time the customer rep said they are going to fix it for me, but it didn't happen. I finally asked to speak to the supervisor and he agreed to fix their error after hanging with him for 30 minutes.
* T-Mobile website is bugged. While I am writing this review (Dec 3, 2007 4:53pm Pacific time), T-Mobile website is totally down ([...]). I can not imagine a major telecom provider would have their website totally down...
* Till now I can not set paperless billing since their email verification doesn't work.
I actually don't have confidence on T-Mobile IT capability. I do know they hire some under qualified engineers into their IT dept. Maybe this is my own opinion, but after all these incidents, I feel I might be right on this.
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