The Review
We haven't had a chance to fully test this product yet, but we've assembled this helpful overview of relevant information on it.
The BlackBerry Curve 9380 offers a 3.2-inch touchscreen with the newer BlackBerry 7 operating system.
The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first all-touchscreen in the Curve line of phones. The phone comes with 3.2 inch screen that runs the BlackBerry 7 operating system. A 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and video recording capabilities is available. RIM preinstalled BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook and Twitter on the phone. There is built-in support for Augmented Reality and NFC.
Features List:
- 3.2-inch screen
- BlackBerry 7
- 5-megapixel camera
- LED flash, video recording
- BBM, Facebook, Twitter
- Augmented Reality and NFC support
- Touchscreen
Press Release
Jakarta, Indonesia and Waterloo, ON - Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced two new smartphones based on the BlackBerry® 7 operating system (OS) – the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9790 and BlackBerry® Curve™ 9380.
The new smartphones offer impressively slim and stylish designs with enhanced communications, multimedia, productivity and social connectivity features. The BlackBerry Bold 9790 is both powerful and compact, offering users a fully loaded, high performance smartphone with the dual benefits of a high resolution touch display and a highly tactile keyboard. The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first-ever BlackBerry® Curve™ smartphone with a touch display. It continues to deliver the powerful social experiences, ease-of-use and smaller handset size that distinguish the BlackBerry Curve family, while also offering Curve users the choice of a larger display and an all-touch design.
“We are very excited to expand the BlackBerry 7 portfolio with the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380,” said Carlo Chiarello, Senior Vice President, Handheld Product Management at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry smartphones offer a uniquely refined mobile communications experience that people love and we think many customers will be thrilled by the faster performance, beautiful touch displays and compact designs available with these new BlackBerry 7 based models.”
BlackBerry Bold 9790 Smartphone with Touch Display and Keyboard
True to the BlackBerry Bold brand, the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 smartphone is powerful, full-featured and built with premium materials and finishes. It combines a high-resolution and highly responsive touch display with a highly tactile keyboard and a precise optical trackpad, but comes in a narrow design that is easy to carry and exceptionally comfortable to hold. With the BlackBerry 7 OS and powerful 1 GHz processor, the BlackBerry Bold 9790 delivers fast, smooth performance for browsing the web, running apps, working with documents, and enjoying multimedia. It includes 8GB of onboard memory and an expandable memory card slot that supports up to 32 GB of additional storage.All-Touch BlackBerry Curve 9380 Smartphone
The finely crafted BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first all-touch smartphone in the BlackBerry Curve family. It features a highly responsive and brilliant 3.2” high resolution display and comes with preinstalled social networking apps, including BBM™ (BlackBerry® Messenger), Facebook®, Twitter™ and Social Feeds apps, that offer a fun, easy and smoothly integrated mobile experience. This compact and stylish handset also features a 5MP camera with flash and video recording, allowing users to easily capture and share their favorite moments with family, friends and colleagues.Powerful BlackBerry 7 OS
The BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 are both powered by the new BlackBerry 7 OS, which delivers a faster and richer user experience with improved browsing, voice-activated searches, and support for Augmented Reality and NFC (Near Field Communications). It also includes the ability to manage personal content separately from corporate content, and comes with a variety of personal and productivity apps out of the box.BlackBerry 7 also introduces an enhanced browser that provides a significantly faster, more fluid web browsing experience. The browser includes a new JIT (just in time) JavaScript compiler to improve the load time speed of web pages and it offers optimized HTML5 performance for incredible gaming and video experiences. The popular universal search capability has also been enhanced with support for voice-activated search, so users can simply speak to begin searching their device and the web for information.
The BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 smartphones include built-in support for Augmented Reality and NFC, allowing users to connect with the world around them in fresh new ways. With the Wikitude Augmented Reality application, users can find nearby BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) contacts in real-time, read reviews on restaurants close to them, or get the story behind an interesting landmark and points of interest. NFC also enables many new and exciting capabilities, including the ability to make mobile payments, pair accessories or read SmartPoster tags with a simple tap of the smartphone.
BlackBerry 7 includes a number of preinstalled applications and integrated functionality for increasing productivity and easy sharing and collaboration right out of the box. The Premium version of Documents To Go is included free of charge, offering users powerful document editing features as well as a native PDF document viewer. BlackBerry® Protect is pre-loaded*, offering customers the peace of mind that personal data can be backed up and secured in the cloud. BlackBerry® Balance is integrated in BlackBerry 7, allowing users to enjoy the full BlackBerry smartphone experience for both work and personal purposes without compromising the IT department’s need for advanced security and IT controls. The Social Feeds (2.0) app has been extended to capture updates from media and favorites all in one consolidated view. The Facebook for BlackBerry smartphones (2.0) app introduces features like Facebook chat and BBM integration that makes it easier for users to connect with their Facebook friends in real time.
Availability
The BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 smartphones will begin to be available from various carriers around the world over the coming weeks. Availability dates for specific devices from specific carriers will be announced in conjunction with RIM’s partners.Additional Information
For additional information please visit www.blackberry.com
Digital Trends’ Cell Phone Buying Tips:
Best time to buy cell phones
With all major U.S. carriers announcing new phones around the clock and a dozen manufacturers all working overtime to produce the next killer device, keeping track of all the different models in circulation at any given time can seem like a Herculian task. But this frantic pace works to your advantage: Any time is a good time to buy a cell phone, as long as you keep your eyes open.
Jamie Lendino, a contributing editor at PC Magazine, recommends spotting three or four phones that suit your needs, then jumping on whichever one dives in price first. With the rapid pace of cell phones, you shouldn’t have to rest on your laurels for long. “Remember that ‘old’ in the tech world could mean just a few months from now,” says Lendino. Even the original iPhone, a high-demand handset which originally sold for $600, dropped a whopping $200 a little over two months after launch.
Of course, to take advantage of the most attractive phone deals, you’ll need to agree to a two-year service contract with a carrier like AT&T or Verizon. For potential buyers locked into existing contracts, this could mean riding it out with an older phone for a few more months in order to grab the massive rebates available upon renewal. Always call your provider to see if you might be eligible for an upgrade prior to an existing contract expiring. AT&T, for instance, allows customers with monthly bills over $99 to upgrade after just one year – as long as they’re willing to lock into another two years of service.
Mobile operating systems
If you decide to go for a smartphone, choosing the right operating system can be an important factor. The big ones are Apple’s iOS, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, HP/Palm WebOS, Google Android, and Microsoft Windows Phone (formerly Windows Mobile). Individual preferences reign supreme here, but Apple’s iPhone iOS offers the widest selection of apps and the simplest user interface, RIM’s BlackBerry OS is less intuitive but powerful and reliable, HP/Palm’s WebOS strikes a nice balance between the two, Google Android is among the most flexible, and Microsoft Window Phone 7 offers a refreshing design but it’s still finding its groove.
Choosing a carrier
Because most U.S. cell phone carriers heavily subsidize phone purchases in exchange for two-year contracts, and lock the phones to their networks, your choice of cell carrier will have more impact on which type of phone you end up with than any other factor. If you already have carrier and feel satisfied with it, the choice is easy. If not, you’ll need to choose one.
AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon dominate the cell phone market in the States. Speaking in very general terms, AT&T has a reputation for having the hottest phones but somewhat flaky service due to its overloaded towers, Verizon has the best reception but expensive rates, T-Mobile and Sprint offer some of the most affordable plans but have more limited phone selection.
Prepaid carriers like Cricket, Tracfone, and MetroPCS often appear to offer excellent deals, but caveats like poor customer service, limited phone selection and inferior coverage have to be taken into account.
Notable Features
The list of features to look for in a phone could fill an anthology, so we’ll run down some of the most important ones.
Cameras appear on nearly every phone these days. Although a quality camera can be great for quick snapshots, few phone cameras are ready to replace a trusty point-and-shoot. The few with variable focus far outperform fixed-focus cameras, which you’ll find on the majority.
When considering a display, pay attention to size and brightness, which will both come in handy when trying to read it in difficult conditions like outdoors in the sun. LCD displays are still the most common, but OLED displays have been cropping up lately as well. They use slightly less power and produce extremely vibrant color, but suffer from poor outdoor visibility.
Battery life often gets buried at the end of buyers’ wishlists, only to lead to disappointment when they realize they can barely go a whole day without recharging. Be particularly careful with smartphones, which can get particularly thirsty.
If you plan to use your phone for playing music or watching video, be sure to check for internal and external storage. If the phone has a microSD slot you should be able to add up to 32GB of additional storage.
