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In a market space still reverberating from the Apple iPhone launch in late June, Research In Motion (RIM) has released its latest smartphone – the BlackBerry Curve – which Gerry Blackwell of PDAStreet.com calls a step up from the BlackBerry Pearl.
“The company’s latest foray into the consumer/business space” improves on the Pearl’s 1.3 megapixel camera with a 2.0 megapixel edition. The Curve also addresses the Pearl’s lack of stereo headphones and the use of a mini-stereo jack that wouldn’t take standard headphones. The Curve ships with a hands-free headset that includes stereo earbuds that plug into a standard 3.5mm jack.
Thirdly, the Curve does away with the Pearl’s 20-key SureType keyboard, which made for slower typing, with a full 35-key QWERTY keyboard. “Much else remains the same as in the Pearl, which is no bad thing,” adds Blackwell.
The Curve is actually the smallest smartphone available with a full QWERTY keyboard and boasts a high-quality backlit screen. “The e-mail experience is, as always, excellent, and so is battery life. The phone sounds very good and you can use it with Bluetooth headsets.”
Another smartphone reviewer, David DeJean of InformationWeek, recently pitted the Curve against its three primary competitors: the Palm Treo, the HTC Wing and the iPhone. He concluded that the iPhone, with its touchscreen software, represents a paradigm shift in user interface and hardware. “Web browsing on the iPhone is a completely different experience – just as the BlackBerry was, in its time,” he writes.
“What the Treo, BlackBerry (Curve) and Wing have in common is a reliance on a menu-driven user interface, hardware that simply isn’t up to the task of supporting a fully functional web browser, and browser software that tries to do something like web browsing with both its hands tied behind its back,” writes DeJean. “Going forward these defeciencies will be even more obvious as web services and web-delivered applications get more sophisticated.”
Canadian tech reviewer Jack Kapica of The Globe and Mail also noted the shadow the iPhone has cast on the conventional smartphone. “Many handset makers have been focusing their efforts at fitting their products into niche markets and (the BlackBerry Curve) is a classic example. But will the arrival of the iPhone force them to jump back on the one-phone-fits-all bandwagon with Apple? Will they now concentrate on coolness instead of new features?” he asks.
“In niche marketing terms, the Curve lies somewhere between the consumer-oriented BlackBerry Pearl and the all-business BlackBerry 8800, and its makers at Research in Motion are gambling consumers might go for the push e-mail feature, for which RIM found such a lucrative market in the business world. So far, RIM sees the Curve as a niche-market item.”
Analysts have long wondered how RIM would be able to bridge the gap between corporate cellphone/e-mail users (ie. the existing BlackBerry faithful) and the everyday, mainstream consumer. Clearly the company is – as are Palm and the major cellphone manufacturers – scrambling to bridge this gap before Apple does it all on its own.
- allanp@iqmetrix.com
* To read more Blackberry and Smartphone News, check out the following articles from iQmetrix News & Views:
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Expect VoIP, Hot New Handsets at CTIA 2006 |