BlackBerry Curve 9320 review: Coach class

Poor 3 megapixel camera

The BlackBerry Curve 9320 comes with a fixed-focus 3 megapixel camera which takes some pretty low quality shots, even for a small sensor. Close range shots don't come out well for the lack of autofocus.

The camera comes with the same unattractive interface and relatively low number of customizable settings. What's even worse is that the bar at the bottom covers a part of the frame, making proper framing really hard.

The Bold 9320 camera interface

The camera key is also pretty uncomfortable, considering that you do most of your shooting with the Curve 9320 in portrait mode. Most of the time you'll use the trackpad to snap a picture, which works fine, although at times you'll accidentally select something besides the shutter.

Geotagging, flash and scenes can be accessed straight in the viewfinder and those are just about the only options you get with the Curve 9320. The only other thing you can customize is image resolution, which is located in the advanced settings menu.

There are no settings for exposure compensation, white balance, ISO or anything like that. There is face detection, but that is a dedicated scene, rather than a separate setting.

The image quality of the BlackBerry Curve 9320 is pretty bad - the dynamic range is poor and the colors are hued towards the blue spectrum. The amount of resolved detail is about par for the sensor, although there is a fair amount of noise.

Here are some camera samples taken with the Curve 9320.

BlackBerry Curve 9320 camera sample photos

Photo quality comparison

We've also added the BlackBerry Curve 9320 to the database of our Photo Compare Tool. Here, you can see how it stacks up against other 3 megapixel (and higher) shooters.

BlackBerry Curve 9320 in the Photo Compare Tool

Uninspiring VGA video recording

The BlackBerry Curve 9320 records VGA videos at 30 fps and the camcorder's user interface is pretty much the same as on the still camera.

Camcorder UI

The video quality is about what you'd expect from VGA resolution - low amount of resolved detail, although the color reproduction is much better than on the still camera. The frame rate is good, while the audio records on a single channel at 64Kbps.

Here's a VGA video sample from the Curve 9320 camera.

Great connectivity

The BlackBerry Curve 9320 gives you a broad range of connectivity options, as you would expect in a modern day smartphone.

The quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support secures global roaming and the tri-band 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA gives you the extra speed. The Wi-Fi b/g/n support is another nice addition with an easily customizable Wi-Fi manager taking care of all the connections, as well as providing the ability to enable Wi-Fi hotspot. Bluetooth with A2DP support rounds off the list of wireless connectivity options.

The BlackBerry Curve 9320 is also equipped with a standard microUSB port that doubles as a data connection and charging port. Once connected, you can sync your data with the BlackBerry Desktop Software. It allows you to sync your iTunes collection, save for the files that have DRM.

Finally, you have the option to use your microSD memory card slot for file transfers.