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For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and high-resolution pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Curve_8900

So here’s the big kahuna, the mountain giant, the piercing javelin, if you will.  The Curve 8900 (Javelin) has done well to garner a lot of press, because it’s a well functioning BlackBerry, in a tight package, fitted with some crazy insides, yet lacks 3G.  Many people have stated how gorgeous the phone is, but they take a step back when they learn it doesn’t include a 3G radio.  How does this impact the final use of the phone?  Let’s take a look shall we?

Oh, and of course, let’s smash the darned thing while were at it (with über care, of course).  Read on!

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 is an update to the BlackBerry Curve 83xx series.  Of course, ditching the traditional xx10/xx20/xx30 customs, the Javelin (easier to say than Curve 8900) includes both GPS and Wi-Fi options, similar to RIM’s recent devices.  The one we have here is actually one of the first device launches from T-Mobile in Germany, but the hardware should be exactly the same — except of course, the QWERTZ keyboard.  So without further ado, here’s the review.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Review

Greats

First and foremost, the Curve 8900 (hereon referred to as “Javelin”) is a gorgeous device.  It’s got the same chrome trim as the Storm, relatively the same shape, and a faux-brushed-aluminum backing.  While I prefer the Storm’s actual metal backing, the Javelin makes up for this in weight.  It’s an astonishingly light device, even with the brick of a battery.  The keyboard is similar to the old Curve’s, but almost seems to fit tighter.  In reality, the size differences of the Javelin aren’t very different from the existing Curve, but gosh, the improvements to the aesthetics are amazing.

When you turn the device on (after its traditional white screen + hour glass sequence), the screen blows you away.  It’s bright, it’s clear, it’s gorgeous.  It runs the same resolution as the Bold, but in an even smaller screen.  You won’t notice the difference in pixel density (even though it’s higher on the Javelin), but heck, everything you look at becomes beautiful.

In standard RIM fashion, the keyboard is better than ever.  To the grunts of the meeting-filled corporate employee, the keyboard is a little louder than normal.  You might get looks from a few more people than you normally would with the Bold, but WOW does this thing type fast.  The distinction is clear between the Javelin and the Bold.  The Javelin sports a separated keyboard similar to the Curves, but the Bold has accented keys that are stuck together.  This is completely a subjective category, as they both type ridiculously fast.  Needless to say though, your friends better get a BlackBerry themselves if they want to catch up to you in e-mail speediness.

In terms of media playback, the phone rocks.  Everything is pretty much the same across BlackBerry’s, so what we said here and here, remains the same.  The only thing to note is that the speaker seems to be the same as the Storm’s.  In terms of sound quality and well, bulk, the Bold still dominates.  GPS navigation is simple and easy with your choice of BB Maps or Google Maps.  E-mail, calendars, and most of the rest of your applications remain the same.  In fact, the fundamentals are all here, including the most fundamental of them all: BrickBreaker.

Mellows

Although most of the apps remain the same, the real question many of you really want to know is how well the browser works.  The verdict is: it’s nothing mind-blowing, but it’s definitely an improvement.  The browser seems to handle Javascript a little better than its predecessors, but for regular use, you still want it off.  CrackBerry had a great posting on the Javelin’s browser times.  They’ve shown that the improvements to the Javelin’s browser are pretty darn significant.  So much so that it nearly compares to the Bold’s 3G speeds even though its on EDGE.  Another interesting thing is the new cursor movements.  Before, you had to run your thumb down the trackball dozens of times just to scroll through a website.  To the delight of those who needed treatment for “BlackBerry Thumb“, the new system has an accelerated trackball motion that lets you move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other side in a quick flick.

The camera implementation on this phone is also decent.  While it won’t replace a good point and shoot, the 3.2MP camera with auto-focus generally fits the bill for on-the-go captures.  Our complaint with the camera is its limited zoom (digital zoom only goes to 2.0x) and the excessive effort it requires to get there.  A good long flick moves the zoom from 1.0 to 1.1.  It does take relatively good pictures in low-light however, and the capture lag time is similar to the Bold’s.

Gripes

To be honest, we’re being a little nitpicky here, but the Javelin’s battery cover is quite annoying.  It uses the same latch as the Curve’s, which isn’t really a bad thing, but the build quality of the cover is pretty crap.  The plastic back, which differs from the Storm’s metallic back, is rather flexible.  In effect, the battery cover “pops” in and out near the latch when you’re grasping it with too much force.  Perhaps it’s this particular unit, but the annoyance of a flimsy battery cover has always got to our heads.

Conclusion

The Javelin doesn’t really have too many gripes rather than the flimsy battery cover and the lack of 3G.  We didn’t include the latter, because we understood RIM’s position in marketing this as an update to the Curve — because it is a Curve.  And in fact, the improvements to the browser make the lack of 3G much more bearable.  The tight, new form factor really has us drooling though.  It’s a great device to use, and definitely tops our list of favorites for the moment.  The Javelin presents a good alternative to the faux-leather backed bigger brother, and we’re very satisfied.  Enough chit-chat though, let’s get to the goods!

phoneWreck Score: 9 trackballs out of 10

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Teardown

Here’s probably what the bulk of you came for — in fact, your eyes are probably not even reading this line.  In any case, a lot of people have been requesting for higher resolution pictures.  So ta-da!  Click on the picture for slightly higher-res marked pictures, and the links below for unmarked ones.  Hope you enjoy!

So right off the bat, much of what you see here is actually very similar to the Bold.  The most significant change is the Freescale chipset including the SC29746VK processor and the MMM7010 RF transceiver.  Skyworks takes the win for modulating power for the RF transceiver with the SKY77526.  Looking at the datasheets for these ICs, it seems as if everything was built to be as small as possible.  Judging from the main PCB and its insanely small size (shown below), our guess is that RIM is really looking to make things thinner.  The Storm had a similarly sized PCB as well.

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Cypress Semiconductor continues to win designs for their West Bridge solution, with their CYWB0124AB chip, enabling fast transfer speeds as we earlier noted.  MtekVision makes an interesting entrance as well, claiming quite a large space for their camera signal processor.  We’re guessing this is what’s responsible for their relatively quick and strong camera captures.  Texas Instruments, as always, makes some notable wins with their audio codec, Wi-Fi chipset, and the power management unit (shown above and below).

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Finally, SiRF continues to provide GPS units, and CSR provides Bluetooth functionality.  This is the interesting part, as CSR and SiRF, who provide most of the GPS and Bluetooth ICs for a wide range of handests, have recently announced their intention to merge.  We can’t really speculate as to how this will affect the semiconductor industry in the wireless world, but we imagine that they would definitely offer some hard-hitting competition.  So that’s mostly it!  We’ve posted some of the more important ones below, and the rest, we’ve stuck into our wiki (link below).

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Hope you’ve enjoyed.  Thanks!

If you have questions, comments, concerns, humorous anecdotes, be sure to let us know in the comments or through e-mail (phonewreck@gmail.com). Also be sure to visit the wiki for more pictures (http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Curve_8900)! Thanks!