BlackBerry Curve 9320

The BlackBerry Curve 9320  similar to a Curve of old. It's smooth, with both black and brushed metal tones and has a curved back, which truly fits in the hand well -although it's been moulded with that in mind. It was one of the first things we noticed when we took it out of its packaging.

At 109 x 60 x 12.7mm and 103g, it's a bit thicker than the Curve 9360, and 4g heavier, and positively feels rounder and more chunky. The precise edges are gone.

It's more Playskool to the Curve 9360's Prada - but that will suit some down to the earth: namely, the younger generation this is obviously aimed at and those who are coming to a smartphone for the first time with little consider for aesthetics.

The face holds the screen, which is a fairly basic 320 x 240 pixel job measuring 2.44 inches. The 164 ppi density won't blind you with its greatness, but it does the job sensibly well. We used to view this as amazing on devices of old. Now, we feel more hard done by.

The right-hand side has the volume buttons and expediency key, which is set by default to fire up the camera. Both can be easily changed to open your app of choice.

The processor is 806MHz, which we were quite surprised at. We wouldn't have expected a quad-core chip in here or even a dual-core, come to think of it. But the 806MHz puts in a stellar effort. Maybe it's the extra 6MHz in there, but we were overcome to see very little lag even when multitasking.

A signature characteristic of BlackBerry handsets is the fact that you get numerous app drawers to swipe through (favourites, recent, downloaded and so on), although you can now manage which ones you want to see via the menu. We find them a bit useless and distracting, so are glad we can do this, since there's no option to rename or customise them in any way.

Call quality was great. The sound from the ringtone could have been improved and sounded a bit tinny (we're very fussy) but at least it meant that the speaker was able to flash out calls loud when we placed the BlackBerry Curve 9320 on a desk.

The BlackBerry Curve 9320's camera does what it says on the tin. It's cheap and happy at 3.2MP - which was a grand resolution to have back in 2007, but is not the best on the market these days by any stretch of the imagination.

There's only one snapper, and that's round the back. And while we're all too aware that it's not always about the number of megapixels but so much other things too, there's no way of disguising that the camera on the BlackBerry Curve 9320 is average, at best.

We are happy to report at least that that it also comes with an LED flash, which is something all too frequently left off cheaper phones.

There is a variety of scene modes included just like in the camera app (although fewer of them) and image stabilisation rears its head here again but, also again, we couldn't really see what it offered.

There is a video light, but gallingly you have to decide if you want to have it on or off before you start shooting your video, which is annoying - especially if you're moving around between light and dark or maybe shooting in nightfall. You have to stop recording to toggle it on and off, which can wreck videos.

Most people won't notice or wits but we did, and it peeved us.

Another problem is that you have to put a memory card into the BlackBerry Curve 9320 to be able to shoot video. That's because you only get 512MB of storage. Retail units may come with a memory card included but our review device didn't, so it may be value checking before you buy.