BlackBerry Curve 9360 review: Up and about

Telephony has both voice and smart dial

In calls, the BlackBerry Curve 9360 is the usual solid performer. No voice quality drops or reception issues.

What gives the Curve 9360 some extra points however is the Smart dial feature. Indeed that was our preferred way of locating contacts on the handset - you just press a few keys straight on the homescreen and a list of suggested names is promptly returned.

You can then select them with the trackpad to initiate a call.

The in-call screen

Voice Dial is also available via the Universal Voice Search.

The BlackBerry Curve 9360 scored an Average mark in our traditional loudspeaker test, but despite the lower mark the phone sounds really loud so so you should have probably no concerns about missed calls and messages.

A BIS plan is your only way through the messaging

The BlackBerry Curve 9360 handles has all kinds of messages. You get SMS, MMS and email support out of the box and there are also a few IM apps preinstalled.

Checking out the messaging menu

Of course, a BIS account is a must if you are to use email on the Curve 9360. And while we understand the advantages of the BlackBerry internet service, it would have been nice to give users some kind of choice. You know – you can go for the security we offer or you can use whatever internet plan you have and live without it.

The Email client

And we shouldn’t forget that not every carrier worldwide is offering BIS, which reduces the Curve 9360 reach. Still if you do get a subscription you can check out the nicely organized and easily customizable client, which has deservedly earned its name over the years.

Reading an email

Photos can be resized for sending, emails can be flagged and filtered by request, color and status, while folders can be created, edited and deleted on the device itself.

The message editors, which look identical for all types of messages, are pretty simple to use and with a neat interface. There is a counter at the top indicating the remaining characters to 160, and another one showing the number of parts the message will break down into for sending. That one turns into a data counter if you are creating an MMS or email.

Sending Dexter a message with the Curve 9360

Entering recipients is as quick and convenient as it gets. You just start typing and smart-dial kicks in, giving you a list of suggestions.

Complete with a convenient QWERTY keyboard, the Curve 9360 is great at its main job – texting. Some visual improvements would've been welcome, but getting the job done is what really matters here.

The music player has no changes

RIM have surely refreshed the Music Player icons, but that’s basically all they did. The styling is still pretty conservative, but most of the functionality has been there since BlackBerry OS 5.

There’s quick search of tracks and automatic sorting by artist, album and genre. Custom playlists are also supported.

Browsing your tracks in the music player

Album art is on the list of included features too, along with equalizer presets and the single track repeat option.

The now playing screen and the available settings

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in the background. You can then go back to it via the task manager or the main menu. Pausing it by hitting the mute button is also possible, what's missing is an indication of the currently playing song on the home screen.