CURVING TOWARDS THIS INSTEAD...MAYBE

In addition to the Samsung Instinct which was just announced, Research In Motion aka Blackberry just announced that their Curve series will be offered for Sprint. I bought my first Blackberry (the 7520 from Nextel) back in May of 2007, but had a short life expectancy due to it being thrown against a rock in July because of network complications. After about two weeks or so I switched from my Nextel service to Sprint and purchased the Blackberry 8830WE, which I totally love. However, I miss ONE thing that my Nextel "bullet proof" phone had that my current one doesn't...a camera.

I missed the camera feature so much that I had seriously looked into purchasing the Pearl series from Sprint, losing the full size QWERTY keypad just to have the camera feature, but I didn't want to deal with learning how to use the "smart text" feature. I hate T9 text, which is something that I don't have to worry about with my current Blackberry.

It looks as of April 15, 2008, the Blackberry 8330 will be available for around $179.99 (versus the $299.99 Samsung Instinct price tag) after instant and mail-in rebates. This is something that I am very seriously looking into purchasing. In addition to the camera feature, it also allows you to take movies (which are stored on a micro SD card-Blackberry now supports up to an 8GB micro SD card) so you can take hours of video, and a digital voice recorder feature. Rumor has it that you cannot use both hands to text on the Samsung Instinct's virtual keypad, which is a draw back because I do text and drive at the same time.

I compared both the Samsung Instinct and Blackberry 8330 specs side by side. Other than a few little things, basically I've come to the conclusion that I will be getting a LOT more for my money if I purchase the Blackberry. As far as the billing fees are considered, I'll be paying the same on either phone, so that's not an issue any longer.

Anyways, here are some additional specs on the Blackberry 8330.