My BlackBerry Curve Arrives!

BlackBerry 8300, aka Curve

(Credit: RIM, Inc.)

The long-awaited BlackBerry 8300 (the Curve) has arrived at your AT&T store. I'll be carrying it around the next few days, and that should be interesting.

I've been a BlackBerry fan since the original RIM 850. It seems like every generation gets better, lighter--and smaller. Sounds perfect, unless your thumbs are average size or above. For comfort, I've steered people toward the 7290. When the 8703e came out, some stayed with the 7290 because it was easier to type. With the 8800, it became an even more serious challenge. The Curve has slightly better keys than the 8800 (a tiny space between letters), but my concentration these next days will be on usability.

It goes without saying push e-mail is the best, and there are tons of features to look into. We'll get into them next blog entry.

[rmfish]

Beware: The Curve has synching problems!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a new ATT subscriber and two weeks ago bought an 8800. When I heard that ATT now had the Curve, I traded my 8800(you can do this for the first 30 days) for the Curve. It had a camera and better keypad which I wanted. I had no problems with the 8800. When I brought the Curve home last Friday evening I loaded the "Desktop Manager" for synching the Curve to Outlook. This is as important to me as the e-mail function. The Curve loaded all my info the first time I synched. I tried to change some calendar events on Saturday and noticed I had a problem: the Curve would not accept any new events or changes. I tried to un-install and made sure all my prefs were checked in the program to no avail-each time I tried to Synch, the software went back to the beginning of my calendar(4000 items) and took forever to finish the synch. I was very frustrated by Monday when I called ATT customer service. They could not handle the problem so they sent me to RIM. RIM advised me that they had a synching software problem on the Curve. They also told me they were working on it but couldn't give me a date it would be fixed. I am always updating my calendar so this is very frustrating. I am contemplating taking it back to ATT before my "30 day" window of opportunity to exchange ends. It is a great device, camera works great, but I need to synch correctly and this is a major hassle.