Curve 8520 marks Blackberry’s consumer assault on feature phones

It is with no small delight that I sat down with Rob Orr, Blackberry’s Senior Director of Product Management EMEA, to find out more about the all new Blackberry Curve 8520.

This is not a phone for Mobile Industry Review expert readers. Definitely not. It’s a phone for the rest of the planet — it’s target precisely at the normobs who’re currently walking about the United Kingdom with shitfeature phones without any features. These are the ’25-pound-per-month-massive’, the huge, huge group of PAYG and contract customers who have previously been locked out, financially, from the mobile excitement.

I’ve been reading about Blackberry’s consumer plans for a long time and they’ve only really begun to materialise, in my mind, this year — with Orange in the UK becoming the first operator to offer the device PAYG without a contract.

But now with the release of the Curve 8520, Blackberry are moving swiftly for the jugular. There’s certainly a lot of competition out there, but I think the allure of the Blackberry brand — the cachet of bringing out a ‘serious business phone’ that actually does a lot more — is going to really help them.

Only yesterday I was walking along the road and hit the flipping roof when I saw that the 50 year old housewife walking in front of me was operating a sodding Blackberry Bold. This doesn’t say much for my personal mobile industry coolness. Yes, I like to have the best. Better than the average housewife, anyway. And you do too, right? Go on. I know you do.

The Curve is aimed squarely at the 25-pound-per-month contract bracket in the United Kingdom. At that point, on an 18-month deal, the operator can usually afford to give the device away free and that’s the expectation with this device. It’s entry-level. But, perhaps surprisingly, it’s a gorgeous device. It’s rubberised around the sides — that’s going to keep it in good condition for a long time — and it sports an attractive ‘piano black’ exterior.

Rob explained to me that whilst Blackbery will continue to make devices that appeal directly to the mobile operator’s highest value customers, the 8520 marks a move into the next segment of value customers (“the sweet spot”). Pretty soon I hope to see legions of feature phone users swap out their dire mobile experiences for a connected Blackberry existence.

The enterprise market will be taking note too, says Rob. The new 8520 will finally give the CFO a reasonable alternative to buying the bog standard Nokia for most of the company. The new price point (it’s estimated that the deivce should be available on PAYG for sub 200 pounds) will compete directly with the feature phone ranges.

And I think it’ll be a winner with both markets.

You’ve got the QWERTY keyboard, familiar to and relied upon by millions. But you’ve also got the rather snazzy touchpad technology. Instead of the trackball (used on the Bold for example), the 8520 sports a really nice and highly usable and clickable touchpad to navigate around the device.

Blackberry’s attempts to consumerise their operating systems are laudable. They’re definitely getting there. The first time I glance at the 8520 curve, I see a Facebook and Twitter icon on the front-screen. It’s not just about email anymore. Social networking (Facebook, MySpace) and instant messaging support (all the usual suspects) are included on the device by default. You’ll need download Blackberry’s App World manually though. (I suspect this is Blackberry playing nicely with the mobile operator demands — you can easily download over-the-air from mobile.blackberry.com.) TwitterBerry is thus just a click-away. And with the release of Blackberry App World 1.1, the store continues to offer an increasingly better range of apps.

The multimedia capabilities on the 8520 are looking rather nifty. Used with the Blackberry Bluetooth Connect BlackBerry Remote Stereo Gateway platform you can — as Rob does — get a seamless music experience from car-to-home-stereo. Or simply place the device on the table and listen to how the audio echos brilliantly from the smartly placed speaker on the top of the device, “So that,” Rob explains, “If you’re having a conference call, the surface throws up the acoustics nicely.”

Or if you’re watching the Harry Potter trailer at full blast, it sounds fantastic.

For an entry level handset I’m pretty impressed.

It’s a 2G device. Not that anyone will notice the difference. You and I might but, of course, the 8520 is not for you, dear mobile expert. It’s for your sister. Or your mother. Or your friend’s friend who’s been using a tiny-weeny rubbish LG for the last 8 years.

And what’s more, setting the device up and getting it working isn’t a total arse. My Google Mail account configured in — I shit you not — 10 seconds, with just my username and password. No imap servers. No port numbers.

It took Blackberry 10 years to ship 50 million devices.

But in the last fiscal year, they shipped 26 million alone.

So I think we’ll be seeing quite a lot of black, violet and frost coloured Curve 8520 devices roaming the streets soon.

Here are the key features:

• Full-QWERTY keyboard and touch-sensitive optical trackpad for reliable, responsive typing and navigation
• 256MB Flash memory and a 512Mhz next generation processor for enhanced performance
• Premium phone features including voice activated dialing, and Bluetooth (2.0) support for hands-free use with headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals
• 2 MP digital camera with zoom and video recording
• Advanced media player for music, pictures and videos, with dedicated media keys and a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, plus BlackBerry® Media Sync, which makes it easy to quickly sync music from iTunes® or Windows Media® Player with the smartphone*
• Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, social networking and sharing, news and weather, productivity and much more
• BlackBerry® Internet Service support for access to up to 10 supported email accounts, including most popular ISP email accounts such as Yahoo!®, Windows Liveâ„¢ Hotmail®, AOL® and Gmailâ„¢; and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support, which provides advanced security and IT administration features for corporate deployments
• Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD/SDHC memory card slot, supporting cards of up to 16 GB today and expected to support next generation 32GB cards when available; a 2GB card is included
• Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
• Quad-band world phone: EGDE/GPRS/GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)

Find out more at www.blackberry.com/curve8520.

I’ve got a trial device for a week so if you’ve got any questions, let me know below.