RIM BlackBerry Curve 9360 Qwerty smartphone

Thumbs up?

Points on a Curve

The latest BlackBerry Messenger 6 is also on board, and now lets you trade free instant chats with your mates from within some other apps and games. The 800MHz processor backed by 512MB RAM isn’t the most powerful on the market but it feels fast, unencumbered by the widgets or fancy graphics you’ll find on the latest Androids for example.

Not the fastest on paper, but performs well

The speaker delivered perfectly fine call quality and there were no obvious problems with getting and maintaining a signal. There’s only 512MB of on-board memory but the microSD card slot will let you add up to 32GB if you need it. As far as power consumption goes, the Curve 9360 held up pretty well – considering it packs a weakly 1000mAh battery – delivering a good day and a half of heavy use.

An attractive option for BBM fans on a budget

Verdict

On this evidence, BlackBerry’s lower end Curve range is moving steadily up the capability ladder and if you’re a fan of BBM it’s well worth a look. If you're unlikely to fall for the charms of BBM, then there's growing range of budget Android handsets, with plenty more apps, which may have more appeal. ®

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