BlackBerry Curve 8350i

I had the Boost Mobile unlimited plan for about a year, and the one thing that bothered me about it was that the internet access was so not user friendly that I never really used it. I started looking at other plans and other companies only to find that their plans were more expensive and data plans were not unlimited. And the one that was just as cheap as Boost Mobile was not available in my area anyway. I was just about to give in when I did one last search and found this; a Blackberry phone originally for Nextel's system that had been reprogrammed to run on the Boost Mobile unlimited plan. I chose the Blackberry Curve 8350i from Boostberry.com. At the time I did this, Boost did not offer a Blackberry for their service. This Nextel/Boost version of the phone is the same in many ways as others in the 8300 line, but different in a couple of respects. The one big one that jumps out at me is Wi-Fi access. Internet speed on the Boost Nextel network is slow at best. Wi-Fi makes it useable in any hot-spot location, including your home wireless access. The other difference is in the battery life on standby. See below for more on this. You get all factory accessories and additional bonus accessories including a Bluetooth headset and an unconditional one year repair or replacement warranty. All Accessories: GPS, voice control, and 2.0 MP digital video camera, 1 GB Micro SD memory card, battery, home charger, swivel belt holster, wired-stereo headset, USB data sync cable, software CD, Blackberry User Guide, and BoostBerry User Guide. The video camera by the way is not just a typical 5-10 second capacity video camera included on smaller phones. I am not sure of the actual capacity- I can't find any spec that has it. But I ran mine for over 2.5 minutes and it was still going strong. Since then I have learned that you have a choice of using phone memory for very short video and fuzzy image, or you can select to use the memory and for longer higher quality video. Bonus extras included: custom-fitted silicone gel case, car charger, Bluetooth headset, and Boost SIM activation kit with a $5 credit. Please note that this credit is only good for new Boost Mobile customers. If you are already a customer and choose to keep your current number, this credit will not apply. You also get a plastic holster style with a belt clip. Checking the prices of these in the stores, I may have to put mine on EBay. It is nice they include this and the gel-case, but I opted for a different holder that offers a bit more protection. Boostberry sells new and refurbished Nextel Blackberry's, with un-activated Boost SIM Starter kits. They unlock, adapt, and program the phone to make full use of Boost Mobile's $50 per month Unlimited plan. (This price at time of writing. I see they are $60 now and still a good deal.) You get Unlimited Nationwide Calling, Roaming, Email, Internet, Walkie-talkie, (SMS/MMS) Text and Picture messaging, IM, Chat, Twitter, Pandora (Music) and GPS Navigation. Your BlackBerry is fully tested and pre-loaded with more than 25 software applications including: Opera and BlackBerry browsers, Google Mobile Apps, Google Mail, Google Maps , Google Synch, Google Voice Search, GPS, LifeInPocket, WorldMateLive, Nav4All, BlackBerry Maps and MyLocation and includes turn-by-turn voice instructions. But wait, you also get IM and Chat: Nimbuzz (Skype, Google, Yahoo), EQO, Ramble (AOL IM), and the Social Networking sites: TwitterBerry, FaceBook, and MySpace. Not enough? It also has News & Weather: CNN, ESPN, Weather Eye, and BlackBerry Weather. And for the more adventurous, you can search the internet for other applications to try. There are so many, I am not sure I have found everything yet. But, of all I have found and tried so far, all work as promised. When you receive your BlackBerry for Boost Mobile you have the option of selecting a new number or transferring your current cellular number to Boost Mobile. If you are already a Boost Mobile customer, you can keep your current account and telephone number. Easy-to-follow activation instructions are included. Features and Specifications Full QWERTY Keyboard and Trackball Navigation- The trackball is a bit odd at first, but I am getting used to it. The keyboard is a bit hard to see at times, but it is still easier to use than other non-qwerty entry methods on normal sized cell phones. Wi-Fi 802.11g capable for Hotspots or home usage, and once a Wi-Fi profile is set; the connection is made in the background when you are back in range of that particular hot-spot. One thing to mention here is that if you are on a Wi-Fi connection, your phone can still receive calls. If you are on the internet using the Nextel network connection, your received calls may go to voicemail. Receive emails from multiple POP3 and IMAP corporate and personal email accounts- This is remarkably easy to set up with the included Google-Sync and your free Gmail account. Once in Gmail, you simply add your main email account and it will route through Gmail (if on the supported list). Then you contacts and calendar can also be synched to the Gmail account. With the addition of a quick download, it can also synch to your Outlook Calendar appointments. Text messaging and email include a spell checker. This is good for me, especially since I at times hit the incorrect little keys. When you have your contacts entered, highlighting an entry gives the option of using any of the possible ways to contact that person as long as you have contact options entered. But, this does not seem to work for email. For that, you still have to go to your email program and enter the email address there or copy it from your contacts to paste into Gmail. Once you contacts are in email, you can send directly from your contacts in Gmail. Bluetooth - for PC and headset communications- Also, if your car has a Bluetooth hands free option, you can connect to that. Of the three phones I have tried to connect to my car system, this was by far the easiest. Also, the other phones I had tried would only transfer one contact at a time to the car system. The Blackberry has a way to transfer the entire contact book to your car. One related thing is the formatting of the numbers. My previous phone had required me to include a "1", the area code, and the number. On the Blackberry, the one seems to be sent by default. This is how I learned how to transfer the contacts. The transfer will only work if all numbers are area code, and number format. If you do not have an area code, or you have a "1", the transfer fails. Bluetooth also lets you send pictures to specially equipped photo-Kiosks to print photos from your Blackberry camera. Or you can use the included Blackberry Desktop Manager to transfer files to and from your computer. GPS capable - For geographic location, mapping, and navigational assistance (no monthly fees) - This is pretty neat as far as I can tell. The nav4all has many options that my car navigation system lacks, including one I know I will use; Find my Parking Space. And it seems it is free with the Boostberry version of the phone. I know my regular boost phone had navigation, but it was hard to see on that puny display, and it was not free. Four hour talk-time battery life- 168 hours on standby- The talk time is about the same for all the Curve 8300 series phones, but the standby time for the 8350i is the lowest of the bunch. You can tweak the initial settings somewhat to increase battery standby time. If you do not plan to use Wi-Fi that can be turned off. If you do not have Bluetooth that can be switched off. The backlight comes set for 2 minutes. That can be adjusted to suit you, and each of these little adjustments will add to battery life. Two MP digital camera features a 5x digital zoom and flash. Video recording is also included. You can access the camera from the icon, or a programmable convenience button on the side of the phone. 1GB MicroSD card is included for work files, photos, movies and music. Multimedia Player so you can play still, video and music files you've taken or downloaded- Music files or any other large transfers will have to be by Wi-Fi since the bandwidth of Nextel is limited. Wired stereo headset and Bluetooth headset are included. My stereo headset was not in the box, but within minutes of emailing Boostberry, they responded that it will be sent later. I guess they ran out. Integrated Attachment Viewing: View popular file formats such as Microsoft Word and Excel. It also has a slideshow player. Brilliant Color display - Vibrant TFT display with 65K colors and 320 x 240 display resolution. The display really is nice in a Blackberry. And the first time I went outside in direct sun, I was happy to see that I could still see it. Powerful crystal-clear speakerphone- I had seen a couple of bad reviews of the speaker phone on the Curves suggesting poor audio quality, and I can't agree. I have found my speaker phone to be one of the best I have heard- land line or cell phone. One thing though, it really saps the battery if you are in a long call. In a regular call, calls are clear, and I have not had any drops yet. Also it seems more like full duplex than other phones I have used where one or the other side drops if the other person interrupts while you are speaking. Voice Command and Voice Activated Dialing- I have not tried this yet. I have a low deep voice, and these features usually do not work for me- So I rarely try them, or I leave it until I am really out of things to do. Google-enabled Voice search function- I have not tried this yet. Voice command lets you use your voice to look up contacts, place phone calls and get key information. Walkie-talkie: Nextel Direct Connect instantly connects you to most Boost and Nextel users. I hear this is a good feature too, but I do not know anyone else on Nextel's network, so I can't try it yet. At this point I have only had it running a few days, and I still have much to learn and set up. So far, I am happy with the purchase. I did have a problem that some Boost Mobile customers seem to have with Texting. If you do a Blackberry on Boost network, Boost Mobile Customer assistance can't help you. I had this problem, and sent a quick note to Boostberry.com tech support (which is free by the way). They had sent me a response within half an hour including a step by step fix, with the needed documentation to download to the Blackberry. All together my fix took less than an hour including the time it took to type out the description of the trouble on Boostberry.com. All in all, I am sold on Blackberry. Nextel may not be the best choice as a carrier though, and with Boost Mobile, you have Nextel signal area which definitely is limited to what it is with no sign of ever increasing. And forget about roaming since no other carrier has this particular network set-up. If that is an issue for you, go with a different Blackberry on a different carrier.