Ho there BlackBerry Curve 9380. Didn’t we see you a few months ago, wearing a keyboard? No? Oh, that was your twin, the Curve 9360? I see. So what’s new about you then? NFC? Yes, yes. No buttons, you say? Right. Better come in then.
Verdict
The typing troubles really serve to make this a niche product next to its sibling, the QWERTY infused BlackBerry Curve 9360
Love
Compact size, BlackBerry 7′s universal search
Hate
Keyboard can be maddening, BlackBerry 7 is dull
Specs:
Screen: 3.2-inch, 480 x 360 resolution
Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS
Camera: 5-megapixel camera
Storage: 512MB, 32GB expandable via microSDHC
Battery: 1230mAh
Size/Weight: 109 x 60 x 11.2 mm, 98 grams
Design and build quality
Although the BlackBerry Curve 9380 continues the surprisingly long tradition of RIM touchscreen-only smartphones (Remember the BlackBerry Storm? That was more than three years ago), it actually draws its design cues from the very new and very thin BlackBerry Curve 9360. The silver and black colours are hardly daring, but they’re pleasant enough. And really, it’s the impressively thin 11.2mm profile that’s most striking about this wonderfully light phone (and it looks thinner than it is).
Of course, it has no keyboard buttons on the front, but otherwise things are pretty similar. The plastic back panel is a bit of a smudgy affair, but rock solid and won’t fall off with wear and tear as previous BlackBerry cases have been known to. The moulded volume keys and shortcut button on the right hand side are narrow, but still easy to press.
Previous Curve owners might miss the media control buttons on the top, but you’ve always been able to control music tracks with the volume rocker on BlackBerries anyway (It even works with Spotify now, sort of). Otherwise, for its price range, the Curve 9360′s design is delightful.
Screen
RIM’s had a strange way with screens. Its TFT-LCD displays are some of the best in the business, with supreme brightness and outdoor visibility, and lovely colour reproduction. But they’re often too small, and when they’re not, they’re too low resolution (See the grainy BlackBerry Torch 9800).
The 480 x 360 resolution, 3.2-inch screen on the BlackBerry Curve 9380 however strikes a decent compromise if you have smaller hands: it’s petite and pleasant, but still quite sharp, making long emails and text on websites easy on the eye. Multitouch pinch-to-zoom gestures meanwhile work fairly smoothly in the browser and image galleries.
More of a problem is the keyboard, but we’ll come to that in due course.
Key features
You know what RIM does: it delivers rock solid push email (except for the three days the other month when it didn’t) and, usually, an amazing QWERTY keyboard to aid you in penning your own missives. Its touchscreen models have typically been about media consumption as well however, and as the first Curve model without buttons the BlackBerry Curve 9380 is meant to be a friendly introduction to touchscreens for first time smartphone owners.
Like most other recent BlackBerrys, the Curve 9380 packs NFC (Near Field Communication) technology – RIM is actually ahead of most of the field in this regard, and is to be commended for its foresight. Sadly, it’s so far ahead, there’s little you can use the contact-free data tech for in the UK, but we’ve spoken with the company’s British bosses, and they’re adamant you’ll see payments and the like off take off very soon. Watch this space.
Usability
The BlackBerry Curve 9380 runs BlackBerry 7, the latest version of RIM’s rather long in the tooth mobile operating system. It wouldn’t be fair to call it complicated (it’s more text-heavy than hard), but it doesn’t exactly make best use of the screen space a large touchscreen provides. By default, the homescreen 
has a draw which you have to pull up to reveal your apps. But that just leaves a chunk of empty screen doing nothing in the middle, and you with an extra key to press every time.
Notifications meanwhile are tucked away in a tiny little strip you might miss altogether. It’s a bit of a shame, as RIM’s notification system is rather excellent, and pulls in everything from emails to instant messages, tweets and even RSS via the Social Feeds app.
The mail app is of course its usual stellar self, and this too pulls in messages from different services. Sadly though, it’s rather let down by a frustrating keyboard. Even for the small screen, the keys are cramped, and even though there’s an auto-suggestion bar that predicts words while you type, it’s not very forthcoming, and you’ll end up typing up most of the word before it bothers to come up with anything.
Sadly, it’s not replaceable, whereas Symbian and Android touchscreen phones support different layouts. As a result it makes this a phone very much for people who want BlackBerry Messenger and that alone, rather than BlackBerry Enterprise Server and email for work.
Connectivity
3G, GPS, Wi-Fi – you know how smartphones roll these days. There are no surprises with the BlackBerry Curve 9380, other than NFC. But nor are there any nice extras: no TV-out, no mobile hotspot skills (though this is coming in a future update, supposedly, and you can tether your 3G connection to a PC by USB cable), no DLNA media streaming. Still, this is the entry level BlackBerry, so we suppose we can’t complain.
Camera and media playback
Did we just say the Curve 9380 was an entry level phone? Because it’s clear from the camera app too. The low-power processor is enough for web browsing with the greatly improved BlackBerry browser, and it’s surprisingly fast at grabbing pics too. They’re just not particularly good, with rather washy output. It’d be nice 
to see some ability to edit videos after you’ve taken them too, something RIM is sorely missing on its smartphone platform. As it is you can only send whole clips to YouTube, and in VGA resolution they don’t look great.
It’s fairly sparse on the media playback front too: MP3s, mobile YouTube, AVI and MP4 video clips and that’s your lot. It’s not a bad bunch, but this level of support hasn’t changed in more than three years.
A word on a couple of recent BlackBerry apps however. As of last week, BBM Music is now available in the UK: it lets you download 50 songs from all the major record labels and – if you pay £4.99 per month – stream all the 50 songs of all your friends using it as well.
We definitely prefer Spotify’s a la carte streaming, although it’s still not really an option. Just released as a beta for BlackBerry OS, it’s very unstable on touchscreen models, and in testing only worked with songs on the What’s New tab, and not those you search for. Here’s hoping that changes soon, as BBM Music is very uninspiring.
Apps
RIM doesn’t seem to have got the memo about services rather than apps on smartphones, and while its BlackBerry Messenger chat client is as solid as ever, that’s pretty much all you get. Even that’s been bettered by cross-platform rivals such as WhatsApp.
Otherwise, all you get is the dire BlackBerry Maps service, and the largely dull selection of games and apps on the BlackBerry App World. Oh, pedestrian Facebook and Twitter apps are also included. But really, that’s a bare minimum these days, not a boon.
Call quality/battery life
BlackBerry 7 may be well behind the curve (pardon the pun) when it comes to features, speed and common sense, but it’s still relatively frugal with battery use, and we found ourselves comfortably clearing two days of use with the BlackBerry Curve 9380. Likewise with call quality: this phone is thin, but packs a robust and audible speaker for calls.
Check out our BlackBerry Curve 9380 review photo gallery:
