You don’t often hear “Wal-Mart” and “BlackBerry” in the same sentence. But RIM’s new Curve 8520 has been billed as the BlackBerry for the rest of us, available for just $50 at the country’s largest, and decidedly mass-market, retailer. This cheaper Curve certainly looks like a BlackBerry, acts like a BlackBerry, and has multimedia apps like most modern cellphones. But it only works on T-Mobile’s EDGE network, not the faster 3G backbone. So is BlackBerry throwing Wal-Mart shoppers a curve with this new cheaper version?
While the Curve 8520 lacks the design flourishes of the most recent BlackBerrys, its rather plain design harkens back to earlier Curve models, like the nondescript 8700 and 8800. Beneath its rather pedantic surface are a surfeit of features for both work and pleasure, including full PIM sync, music and video players, full text, IM and, naturally, BlackBerry’s nonpareil e-mail capabilities. That includes complete Microsoft Office attachment viewing, reading and editing, and several other embedded apps, including direct links to Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. The BlackBerry App Store also offers hundreds of other apps. Inexplicably, the App Store app isn’t preloaded on the Curve – you have to download it yourself.
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