Blackberry 8520

The 8520 will look instantly familiar to anyone who's used one of BlackBerry's Curve handsets, except for one new addition. BlackBerry has chosen to introduce its new optical trackpad on this phone. This replaces the company's iconic, mini trackball, or 'pearl'

blackberry have indicated to us that this new trackpad is likely to be used across all new Curve devices mainly because it has no moving parts and so is less prone to dust and dirt. This being so, it really needs to deliver the goods. We've been fairly unimpressed with optical touchpads on devices like the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger, but thankfully the one on the 8520 is in a totally different league. It's a pleasure to use as it's both accurate and responsive and really we didn't miss the old style track ball at all. You can also adjust its horizontal and vertical sensitivity to customise the speed at which it zips around icons on the screen.

As the new trackpad doesn't stick out from the case like the old trackball, blackberry has now made the four main buttons under the display sit completely flush with the screen giving the handset a much sleeker look than previous Curve models. It has also changed around some of the other controls. For example, gone are the lock and mute buttons at the top of the screen to be replaced by a row of three rubberised media transport controls - two track skip keys and a play/pause button. The traditional side mounted buttons have also now been 'weatherised', so they're not as exposed to the elements as they used to be.

blackberry has also sensibly added a standard 3.5mm headphone/headset jack so if you don't like the supplied headset you can swap it for your own cans, although you'll lose the hands-free functionality. The addition of a standard headset jack is welcome, but blackberry has annoyingly placed it on the left edge of the phone rather than at the top with the result that lead tends to snag when you're taking the handset in and out of your pocket.

On the plus side the 35-key backlit QWERTY keyboard is excellent as ever. The keys may be small, but as they're slightly raised they're easy to hit with your fingers and thumbs so tapping out emails is not a problem. The transmissive screen is also nice and bright making videos and pictures look surprisingly vivid. However, at 2.46in it's relatively small by today's smartphone standards and only has a resolution 320 x 240 pixels so it feels a tad cramped when you're using the web browser. The handset itself measures 109mm in height, 60mm in width and 13.9mm in depth, and weighs in at 106g.

technical specifications:

General

• Network :GSM 850 / GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
• OS :Blackberry OS
• Formfactor Stick
• Depth 13.9 mm
• Height 109.0 mm
• Width 60.0 mm
• Weight 106.0 g
• Styling: no
• Typical usage Web / email

Connectivity

• Messagin :SMS, MMS, Email, IM
• WiFi : Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth :2.0 with A2DP & EDR
• 3G :no
• EDGE :Class 10, 236.8 kbps
• GPRS :Class 10, 32 - 48 kbps
• Infrared :no
• USB :microUSB

Display

• Screen Display
• Type: TFT 65K colors
• Size: 320 x 240 px, 2.64"

Memory

• Internal Memory: 256 MB
• External Memory: microSD card slot expandable up to 16 GB
• Phonebook :Yes, Photocall
• Call Log :Yes

Features

• Photo :2.0 MP, 5X digital zoom
• Image Support: bmp, jpg, gif, png, tif, wbmp

Additional

- Supports BlackBerry App World™

- Media Keys: Play/Pause/Mute, Back, Forward

- Trackpad: ESC and Menu key

- Corporate data access

- Keyboard backlighting

- MAC OS Syncing

- Facebook & MySpace

- T-Mobile Unlimited Hotspot Calling service

Player

• Multimedia Player, Dedicated Music keys, Sync iTunes or Windows Media Player playlists with BlackBerry® Media Sync
• Audio Support: AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 PRO/WMA10, AAC-LC

Touchscreen :no

Video

• Videocall camera, Video recording
• Video Support: MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV3

Radio :no

PDA :Smartphone

Email

• Integrates with an existing enterprise email account, Integrates with optional new device account, Works with : BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft® Exchange, BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for IBM® Lotus® Domino® , BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Novell® GroupWise®

Push to Talk no

GPS :no

Ringtones :Polyphonic (32-chord), MP3, MIDI, downloadble, vibrate

Battery

• Talk time 270.0 m
• Standby time 408.0 h