T-Mobile and Canada’s Research in Motion have announced the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone, the latest salvo in the company’s addicting portable communications offerings. Like previous entries in the Curve line, the 8520 will sport consumer-oriented features like Facebook and MySpace integration, email, and mobile multimedia and entertainment. And unlike any previous BlackBerry, the Curve 8520 will ship with the long-delayed BlackBerry for Mac desktop software, offering out-of-the-box capability to sync with Macintosh computers, rather than relying on third-party solutions.
“More and more cell phone users are choosing to upgrade to a smartphone and the new BlackBerry Curve 8520 will undoubtedly convince many more people to make the switch,” said RIM VP of product management Carlo Chiarello, in a statement.
The BlackBerry Curve features a full-QWERTY keyboard for email and messaging needs, a 2 megapixel digital camera, a 2.6-inch 32- by 240-pixel display, 256 MB of flash memory, microSD/SDHC storage for up to 16 GB of media and data storage (the phone ships with a 1 GB card), and sports both Bluetooth and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, along with EDGE/GPRS/GSM mobile service. Customers will also be able to tap into the BlackBerry App World to expand their phone’s capabilities, and RIM promises BlackBerry Sync makes it simple to synchronize media between the 8520 and either Windows Media Player or iTunes. BlackBerry for Mac will require Mac OS X 10.5.5 or newer, so folks who have not (or cannot) run Mac OS X Leopard won’t be able to use the service.
The BlackBerry Curve 8520 will go on sale August 5 at T-Mobile retail locations as well as selected dealers and Wal-mart locations for $129.99 with a two-year service agreement.
