Introduction
The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is RIM’s first ever-released Curve with a touchscreen. The Curve lineup is usually an expression of RIM’s understanding for a budget phone and this one supposedly, doesn’t make a difference. It should attract customers with a lower entry price while offering the full BB OS 7 experience.
The new Curve 9380 is basically a downgraded Torch 9860 – it has a less-capable processor and smaller and low-res display. Both gadgets look similar too, but the Curve's pricetags makes up for the differences.
So, let’s take a look at the Curve 9380 full feature list, followed by potential deal-breakers as we saw them.
Key features:
- 3.2" 16M-color TFT touchscreen of HVGA resolution (360 x 480 pixels)
- Quad-band GSM support and tri-band 3G with HSDPA
- Single-core 800MHz processor
- 512MB RAM
- BlackBerry OS v7
- BlackBerry’s proprietary email service and data security
- Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity
- GPS receiver and BlackBerry maps preloaded
- 5 megapixel fixed-focus camera and a LED flash
- VGA video recording @ 30 fps
- 150MB of inbuilt storage
- 2GB MicroSD card pre-bundled
- Four physical buttons at the bottom
- Optical trackpad
- Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
- DivX and Xvid video support
- Office document editor
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- Smart dialing
- Ultra-fast boot times
- Solid build quality
Main disadvantages:
- BlackBerry Internet Service account is a must to enjoy all the phone features
- No physical QWERTY keyboard (a potential deal breaker for a BlackBerry)
- No videocalling and no front facing camera either
- No Flash support for the web browser
- No FM radio
- Screen has no haptic feedback
- Poor audio quality and loudspeaker performance
As you can see, most of the listed drawbacks of the new Curve are typical BlackBerry. So if tyou are even thinking about getting any of RIM’s phones, you’ve probably already accepted to live with those – the mandatory BIS plan for emails and data traffic as well as the poor variety of apps and the high App World prices.
So, the Curve 9380 offers the latest BlackBerry experience on a cheaper price and without losing much of its appeal. The BlackBerry OS 7 on this Curve is as capable and fast as on the Torch 9860, the main difference being the lack of HD video recording.
Our traditional hardware tour starts right after the jump.
Design and build quality
The Curve 9380 is made entirely of plastic - the reason why it weighs just 98g. Despite the similarities with the Torch 9860 design, there is no metal on the panels this time around.
Most of the material used on the new Curve is black glossy plastic so there will be lots of fingerprints, smudges and unpleasant marks of whatever touches the phone. The only parts that are not glossy are the already mentioned chrome framing and some rubberized second frame for the side controls and the camera/flash combo.
Most of the front bezel is occupied by the 3.2" HVGA capacitive touchscreen with 188ppi pixel density. It's not among the best we've seen, but the display is actually quite good - vibrant colors and decent contrast, very good viewing angles and the sunlight legibility.
| Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | |||
| LG Optimus Black P970 | 0.27 | 332 | 1228 | 0.65 | 749 | 1161 |
| Apple iPhone 4 | 0.14 | 189 | 1341 | 0.39 | 483 | 1242 |
| HTC Sensation | 0.21 | 173 | 809 | 0.61 | 438 | 720 |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S | 0 | 263 | ∞ | 0 | 395 | ∞ |
| Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc | 0.03 | 34 | 1078 | 0.33 | 394 | 1207 |
| Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II | 0 | 231 | ∞ | 0 | 362 | ∞ |
| BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 | 0.29 | 403 | 1376 | 0.47 | 618 | 1304 |
| BlackBerry Torch 9810 | 0.3 | 322 | 1074 | 0.45 | 503 | 1112 |
| BlackBerry Torch 9860 | 0.29 | 426 | 1456 | 0.47 | 665 | 1413 |
| BlackBerry Curve 9380 | 0.47 | 370 | 795 | 0.66 | 569 | 863 |
The one thing that we don’t like about the RIM's touchscreens is the lack of haptic feedback.
Under the display, there’s the typical BlackBerry navigation combo of Call keys, Menu and Back buttons. They're all big enough for comfortable use. Unfortunately, all four controls are part of one plastic plate and because of that - the inner two are really tough to press. Placed in the middle is the trackpad, which will get its share of use, especially in the system menus that aren't all that touch friendly.
The earpiece and status LED are the things to note above the display, where the BlackBerry logo takes a prominent spot.
On the left side of the Curve 9380 there's only a MicroUSB port used for charging and file transfers. Its central position is not the most comfortable but it looks neat.
The volume keys are on the right side, with a very subtle mute button in between. It doubles as play/pause button in the music player. The convenience key near the bottom is set by default to serve the fixed-focus camera.
The lock button is placed at the top of the BlackBerry Curve 9380 but similar with some of the front controls, the Lock key is also pretty tough to press with no tactile feedback. The unprotected 3.5mm audio jack is also nearby.
The bottom of the phone has the same glossy plastic finish as the top and only features the microphone pinhole.
The 5MP camera lens and the LED flash are at the back surrounded by rubberized plastic. The black glossy battery cover, although looking pretty, gets smudgy very fast and isn’t that nice to touch. A chrome plastic frame runs around the back and the side controls.
The loudspeaker grill is at the bottom.
Underneath the battery cover you'll see the 1250 mAh Li-Ion battery and the hot-swappable microSD card slot. The SIM compartment is under the battery.
The battery of the Curve 9380 achieved a score of the average rate of 39 hours in our battery test. This means that if you use your device for an hour each of phone calls, web browsing, and video playback every day, you will have to recharge it every 39 hours. You can check out the full scoop on the Curve 9380 performance over at our blog.
The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is a compact, pocket-friendly and easy to handle. There is nothing new or unique with its design, or the materials it is made of. But like most of the RIM smartphones, the Curve 9380 is excellently built without any wobbling or creaking. We are not impressed by its design, the new Curve is still a looker and if it wasn't for the glossy plastic, it might have been another beauty within the BlackBerry lineup. We guess that's not the point of the mid-rangers though.
BlackBerry OS 7 is new, but doesn’t feel like it
We already met with the RIM's latest OS on numerous phones with different hardware. At first it was a pleasure, but then it is inevitable to realize it’s the same old OS with the bare minimum of touch-optimizations.
And when we thought we saw everything, here comes the first ever touch-only Curve. It's a small and cute gadget, supposedly cheaper than its other touch-capable siblings. The 3.2" display has HVGA resolution, but the BB OS 7 is good in resolution scaling so it fits equally well on the VGA or even the WVGA ones.
We are going to look at the BB OS 7 in detail once again, for a complete and comprehensive coverage of the phone and its features. There are parts of reused text but that's inevitable given most of the interface is the same, it’s only scaled differently. And you can rest assured that all the BlackBerry Curve 9380 specifics are duly reflected.
Number 7 is the last upgrade of the OS before the upcoming switch to QNX. The OS 7 brings few new features (NFC and HD video are well worth a mention though) and focus rather goes to the improved user experience instead.
The new platform is based on more potent graphics hardware, and it’s exactly the higher system requirements that won’t allow older BlackBerry phones to run the new BB OS 7.
Here goes our traditional video demo to warm you up.
Same ol' gallery
The image gallery hasn't changed since the OS 6, so it should be familiar to all the BlackBerry users already.
Images can be browsed in grid or viewed as a standard list. There’s searching by name here too, but we’re not the type that remembers the names of our image files, so we won’t count that one in favor.
The Curve 9380 has a built-in accelerometer to automatically toggle portrait and landscape mode as you browse your picture collection.
Picture browsing is pretty fast and so are panning and zooming, including the pinch zoom. A tap and hold on a picture provides shortcuts for sending, copying and renaming. You can set it as wallpaper as well or use as a contact photo. Further options such as image properties, rotate or slide show are available in a popup menu.
New icons for the music player
Surely, RIM has refreshed the Music Player icons, but that’s basically all they did. It’s still pretty conservatively styled, but most of the functionality has been there since BlackBerry OS 5.
There’s quick searching of tracks and automatic sorting by artist, album and genre. Creating custom playlists is also supported.
Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in the background. You can then go back to it via the task manager or the main menu. Pausing it by hitting the mute button is also possible, but unfortunately, there's no indication of the currently playing song on the home screen.
Rich video codec support
We admire the whole OS 7 lineup for its video-playing capabilities and the Curve 9380 is no exception.
The 3.2" screen is perhaps big enough for decent video consumption. The video player's interface 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 plus a dedicated fit/zoom to screen one.
The Curve 9380 video player promises 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 ones didn’t go that easy. Some of the files were OK, while others where just incompatible. It seems it's either the bitrate or audio codec that were to blame, but whatever it is, we won't count on that XviD support much if we were you.
The general performance here is decent, which is probably more than most BlackBerry users will ever need.
Poor audio output
Here's a quick, but unfortunate advice for you - if you want a smartphone with good audio output stay clear of the BlackBerry Curve 9380.
The RIM smartphone did quite uninspiringly in the first part of our test - when connected to an active external amplifier. So if you are using it with your home stereo or car audio you will get decent noise levels, dynamic range and limited stereo crosstalk, but imperfect frequency response and above average intermodulation distortion.
But as soon as you plug in a pair of headphones in this one, things are really starting to look grim. Distortion levels go through the roof and so does stereo crosstalk. At the end, you are stuck with an output that's quite far of the source signal and that is unacceptable for a modern-day smartphone.
BlackBerry App World
The BlackBerry App World is the RIM application distribution solution. Quite well organized, it accepts payment by credit card or Paypal. Some apps you can get for free of course. Apps can be managed on a computer. There are enough categories and a search box to make searching easier.
There's a basic filtering system as well - it allows you to check out the highest rated free and paid applications, as well as the newest titles. In general there's hardly much to complain about the BlackBerry App world interface.
The number of applications isn’t as impressive as in the App Store or the Android Market at just over 14500 apps, 3500 games and 12000 themes, and to make it worse only a small fraction of the titles are actually free (though some of the paid apps offer free trials).
Unfortunately, as usual, while downloading an app from the AppWorld you can barely do anything else with the phone while downloading.
The BIS plans is what makes the BlackBerry Maps tick
As one would expect nowadays, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 is equipped with a built-in GPS receiver and comes with A-GPS support. For navigation you get BlackBerry Maps preinstalled. Unfortunately it is yet another application that only works with a BlackBerry internet plan activated. And the only navigation option you get is directions.
BlackBerry Maps also allows you to send your location to anyone via email or SMS, and that rounds off a decent but certainly not spectacular application.
Also, addresses that are included in messages are automatically detected and can be displayed on the map at the expense of a few clicks. The map data has also been updated, including more cities than ever. We can still think of at least several apps with more detailed maps, but let's not get too picky here.
Final words
It's like we already met with the Curve 9380. Since it’s a completely different approach to the Curve lineup there is just no basis for parallels with older Curves. But remembering the previous BlackBerry OS 7-based smartphones we had, the Torch 9860 will surely ring a bell.
The touch-only Torch packs a bigger 3.7" WVGA display and a faster 1.2GHz processor. And these are all the differences over our guest of honour - the Curve 9380. Saving on the hardware makes sense though - it fits perfectly on the Curve's idea for a cheaper price tag. But don’t get too excited yet, the RIM's understanding for cheap have always been a lot different from the traditional smartphone user opinion.
So, the new Curve 9380 is not something we haven’t seen so far, it's a downgrade on an already familiar phone. But surprisingly, this actually works. While the Torch 9860 was big and not every RIM user's choice, the new Curve is smaller and lighter, but still equally capable and running the OS 7 as smoothly as any other OS 7-based BlackBerry. And don’t worry about the screen - its ppi, contrast and sunlight legibility are very good so you'll hardly notice the lower resolution.
We talked a lot about the Torch 9860, so it makes sense for it to be the Curve 9380 main competitor. The reason is quite simple - the price gap between those two is less than €80 making the Torch 9860 an attractive, even tempting alternative. But once again, the Torch is bigger and heavier than the Curve - so it’s not for everyone.
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