BlackBerry Curve 9360

Introduction

This QWERTY messenger is compact and to the point, with clean and grown up design. The Curve 9360 is sure it can deliver, its confidence unshaken by unknowns and uncertainties. RIM must've enjoyed the safety and comfort of doing what they're best at.

The new Bold flagship and the next Torch generation did the Curve 9360 a favor by taking the pressure of high expectations off it. All it needs to do is focus on the important stuff: giving business users and heavy texters the quality service they deserve. And by the way, it should be the best Curve experience they ever had.

The higher-res screen, robust processor and the new BlackBerry OS 7.0 with NFC support propel the 9360 into an entirely different dimension. Well out of reach for the Curve as we knew it - stuck at QVGA screens and 2 or 3 MP cameras. In fact, it's an option that Bold 9700 and 9780 users would do well to consider. Blasphemy - upgrading from a Bold to a Curve! Well, no more. Just take a closer look at the specs.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA
• 2.46" 16M-color TFT landscape display of HVGA+ resolution (480x360)
• Full QWERTY keyboard
• Optical trackpad
• 800MHz processor
• 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM
• Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity
• NFC support
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity
• Bluetooth v2.1
• 5 megapixel fixed focus, VGA video recording
• BlackBerry OS 7
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB), 4GB card in the box
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Decent audio quality
• Office document editor
• Smart dialing
• DivX and XviD video support

Main disadvantages

• BlackBerry Internet Service account is a must to enjoy all phone features
• Poor still camera quality
• Bland text-only submenus
• Rigid call and navigation keys
• Fixed focus camera
• No HD video
• Glossy back panel prevents good grip, easily greased up

With the Bold stepping across into touchscreen, the Curve has new found space for growth. And the popular line of BlackBerries didn't hesitate to seize the opportunity. The Curve 9360 is a robust upgrade of its predecessor and a huge step forward for the entire lineup.

Uninspiring audio output

The BlackBerry Curve 9360 performance in our audio quality test is best described as just below average. The smartphone isn't among the loudest we have seen, nor has it got the cleanest output, but it's not terrible either.

With no resistance applied to the line-out (i.e. the active external amplifier) the Curve 9360 did quite decently. Its signal-to-noise, dynamic range and stereo crosstalk reading were really good and the frequency response was quite good for the most part. Intermodulation distortion was a quite a bit higher than average for that scenario, though.

And when you plug in a pair of headphones quite serious issues arise. The stereo crosstalk goes to levels we have rarely seen before and even more distortion creeps in.

Impressive video player

With so many better options out there, the Curve 9360 is an easy one to overlook if video-watching is a priority. It would be a mistake. The Curve 9360 does a really great job, so you might want to tick that box on your wish list.

The landscape screen is a good start, while the video player itself isn’t bad either. Its styling might not be too impressive, but the functionality is mostly there.
There are the usual playback controls when you hit a key or tap on the screen, along with a dedicated fit/zoom to screen button.

 The Curve 9360 video player is said to support DivX, XviD, H.264/MPEG-4 and WMV videos up to 720p resolution. It did manage to play all of the DivX files we threw at it, WMV, MOV and MP4 files up to 720p were no problem either, but the XviD videos didn’t go that easy. Some of the files were OK, while others where just incompatible. It seems it's a bit rate or audio thing, but we won't count on that XviD support much.

Gallery copy-pasted from OS 6

The image gallery hasn't changed since the OS 6, so it should be familiar to all BlackBerry users already.

Images can be browsed in grid mode or viewed as a standard list. There’s search by name here too, but we’re not the type that remembers the names of our image files, so we won’t count that as an extra.

Photos can only be browsed in landscape mode or you can manually rotate them. Unfortunately the Curve 9360 has no built-in accelerometer to provide automatic rotation.
You can skip to the next photo without returning to the gallery – you just flick your finger over the trackpad and you are done.

source : gsmarena