RIM introduces BlackBerry Curve 8520

MANILA, Philippines - Research In Motion (RIM) introduced early this week the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone in the Philippines.

The slim and stylish handset, a new addition to the BlackBerry Curve series of smartphones, is scheduled to be available from Globe and Smart at the end of this month.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 introduces an innovative touch-sensitive trackpad that makes scrolling and selection smooth and easy.

It is also the first BlackBerry smartphone to feature dedicated media keys which are smoothly integrated along the top of the handset, giving customers an easy, convenient way to control and manage their music and videos.

The user-friendly design of the Curve 8520 provides quick access to e-mail, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) and social networking sites, including Facebook and MySpace. It features a highly tactile full-QWERTY keyboard for comfortable, accurate typing.

It is also Wi-Fi-enabled and includes rich multimedia capabilities with easy access to music, games and other mobile apps for entertainment on the go.

“Consumers are becoming more sophisticated when it comes to mobile phone purchase decisions. They want something that combines ease-of-use with extensive features and functionality. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone gives them just what they need,” said Gregory Wade, RIM’s regional vice president for the Asia-Pacific.

“This new addition to the BlackBerry Curve series delivers all the great messaging, social networking and multimedia features that customers have come to love about BlackBerry smartphones,” Wade added.

Key features of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone include 256MB flash memory and a 512 Mhz next-generation processor for enhanced performance.

Premium phone features include voice-activated dialing and Bluetooth (2.0) support for hands-free use with headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals.

The Curve 8520 sports a 2MP digital camera with zoom and video recording; an advanced media player for music, pictures and videos; a 3.5-mm stereo headset jack; and BlackBerry Media Sync, which makes it easy to quickly sync music from iTunes or Windows Media Player with the smartphone.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 also gives access to BlackBerry App World, which features a broad and growing catalogue of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones.

Categories include games, entertainment, IM and social networking, news, weather, productivity and more.

BlackBerry’s new smartphone also has BlackBerry Internet Service support for access to up to 10 supported e-mail accounts, including the most popular ISP e-mail accounts such as Yahoo!, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL and Gmail.

The Curve 8520 also has BlackBerry Enterprise Server support, which provides advanced security and IT administration features for corporate deployments.

It has an expandable memory via hot swappable microSD/SDHC memory card slot, supporting up to 16GB cards today and expected to support next-generation 32GB cards when available (a 2GB card is included).

The quad-band world phone supports EGDE/GPRS/GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and is Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) capable.