Research In Motion (RIM) today introduced the BlackBerry® Curve™ smartphone - the smallest and lightest full QWERTY(1) BlackBerry smartphone. With its smooth and friendly design encompassing a large display, easy-to-use keyboard and intuitive trackball navigation system, this powerful new smartphone makes it easy to stay connected to the people and information that matter most.

"The BlackBerry Curve smartphone offers a unique blend of communications, multimedia and web features to provide people with an exceptional mobile companion for both work and leisure," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at RIM. "The BlackBerry Curve delivers RIM's industry leading email and messaging capabilities in a highly approachable smartphone design that is packed with consumer-friendly features including a 2 megapixel camera, enhanced media player and high-performance browser."

Smooth Design and Easy to Use

The BlackBerry Curve smartphone features a liquid silver finish, chrome highlights, smooth edges and soft curves. It is a full-featured smartphone with a full qwerty keyboard and large display and yet it boasts an impressively small and lightweight design at 4.2'' x 2.4'' x 0.6'' and approximately 3.9 oz. The ultra-bright 320x240 display brings images and video to life and includes RIM's light sensing technology that automatically adjusts backlighting levels for indoor, outdoor and dark environments. The handset also features RIM's innovative trackball navigation system that makes scrolling and selecting fast and easy.

Multimedia to Go

The BlackBerry Curve smartphone comes with a 2 megapixel camera, complete with 5x digital zoom, built-in flash, self-portrait mirror and full screen viewfinder. The camera can capture images in up to three picture quality and size resolutions that can be shared instantly by email, MMS or BlackBerry® Messenger and transferred over Bluetooth® or USB cable. Photos can also be immediately set as a unique caller ID or Home Screen image.

The audio system is crisp and clear, playing music and videos through the handset's integrated speaker or through the 3.5 mm stereo jack. The Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP/AVRCP) is supported, and dedicated volume controls are conveniently located on the side of the handset.

A powerful new desktop media manager is also included with the BlackBerry Curve smartphone. The Roxio® Media Manager for BlackBerry®, which was developed with Sonic® and based on the award-winning Roxio Easy Media Creator® 9, introduces a new level of simplicity, allowing users to easily search for media files on their computer, view and organize them, create MP3 music files from CDs, add audio tags, create playlists and automatically copy or convert pictures, music and videos for optimal playback on the BlackBerry Curve smartphone.

The media manager also includes Roxio Photosuite® 9 LE, a comprehensive tool that makes it easy to edit pictures and create photo albums. With PhotoSuite, pictures can be cropped, rotated and straightened, and flaws can be fixed by removing redeye or changing the brightness, contrast and saturation levels. Pictures can even be enhanced with color filters and special effects.

The media player on the BlackBerry Curve smartphone has been refined, allowing users to search for music by simply typing the title, genre, artist or album name. Videos can also be played in full screen mode.

More Storage for Your Tunes, Flicks and Pics

For added storage of music, videos and pictures, the BlackBerry Curve smartphone comes with a microSD expansion slot. It supports up to 2GB cards that are available today and will automatically support 4GB cards that are expected to become available later this year.

Bring the Web With You

The BlackBerry Curve smartphone features a high-performance browser that can download and display HTML web pages quickly and efficiently. Users can bookmark their favorite sites and set up RSS feeds to stay connected to the timely news and information that matters most during their day. The highly responsive browser, large and vivid screen and super-easy trackball navigation provides an exceptional mobile experience.

Full Featured Phone

The BlackBerry Curve smartphone offers many convenient phone features including Speaker Independent Voice Recognition (SIVR) for Voice Activated Dialing (VAD), Bluetooth® 2.0 support for hands-free use with headsets, car kits and Bluetooth peripherals, quad-band operation for global roaming(2), dedicated 'send', 'end', and 'mute' keys, smart dialing, speed dialing, conference calling, call forwarding, noise cancellation technology to offset background noise, a low-distortion speakerphone for hands-free conversations and support for polyphonic, mp3 and MIDI ring tones.

Industry Leading Email & Messaging

The BlackBerry Curve smartphone delivers all the renowned BlackBerry email and messaging capabilities and even features a new integrated spell checker with a user-customizable dictionary to help maintain spelling accuracy on the go. The BlackBerry Curve smartphone is supported on BlackBerry® Internet Service, giving users access to up to 10 work or personal email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts), as well as BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, enabling advanced security and IT administration within IBM® Lotus® Domino®, Microsoft® Exchange and Novell® GroupWise® environments.

Accessorize

The BlackBerry Curve smartphone also comes with a variety of accessories: a stereo headset, travel charger, carrying pouch and USB cable are all included in the box. Additional accessories for BlackBerry handsets, including premium leather holsters and totes, an automotive charger, and Bluetooth headsets are available through retail outlets or online at: www.shopblackberry.com.

Availability

The BlackBerry Curve smartphone (model number: 8300) will be available through wireless carriers around the world, including AT&T in the U.S., beginning this spring.

(1) Keyboard also available in AZERTY and QWERTZ configurations to support different language groups.

(2) Check with service provider for roaming services.

REVIEWS:

RegHardware has a review of the BlackBerry Curve 8300 and writes, "The Curve smartphone has a strong consumer feel to it. For example, it features beefed up multimedia capabilities. So, you can now play back video full screen, and RIM has helpfully thrown in some software - Roxio Media Manager - for converting video into a suitable format to play on the device. However, the results weren't fantastic, with some converted files exhibiting lip sync problems, which was annoying. ... RIM has beefed up the Curve's camera to include a two-megapixel sensor. Results in well-lit surroundings or daylight were fine, but it struggled with noise in darker environments. There's a flash to help compensate for this, although it does tend to over-saturate the subject if you take pictures too close up."

Infosync reviews the BlackBerry Curve smartphone and writes, "Though we were disappointed by call quality on the Curve, in every other aspect of call handling, from the address book to Bluetooth, the device is at the top of its class. Calls suffered from static on AT&T's EDGE network in lower Manhattan, and occasionally we lost EDGE entirely. The address book features live, while-you-type searching from the standby screen, which we like, and this feature is available almost everywhere you need to type a name. Conference calling and Bluetooth were both easy to setup, with no surprises, though we'd prefer a bit less menu digging. The phone supports profiles for alerts, and can use song files from the media player as ring tones. Even the speakerphone worked well, though it, too, suffered from some static. Still, the quality wasn't bad enough to keep it from earning our highest rating in this category." MoreReviews