BlackBerry Curve 8520 Media Launch

RIM (Research In Motion) introduces the new BlackBerry Curve 8520 in Malaysia today, the event was held at Mandarin Oriental hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

The Event

Here’s the crowd waiting for the event to begin.

The media launch started with live performance from the group Bunkface.

They performed 2 songs, the crowd was entertained.

This was followed by an opening note from Gregory Wade – Regional Vice President, RIM Asia Pacific.

After that, an introduction of the product from Benny Neo – Carrier Relations & Sales Manager, RIM.

This was followed by the Q&A session, with questions tackled by Mr. Wade.

The media launch ended with another round of performance by Bunkface. I can tell that the crowd loved their performance. 🙂

And of course, photo opportunity – here’s Bunkface and Mr. Wade for posing for me!

Let’s also not forget our lovely host.

And most importantly, the star of the event – The BlackBerry Curve 8520. 🙂

My Thoughts

I thought that the Curve 8520 was great, small and light. I love the trackpad button and QWERTY keys. What I didn’t like was that it doesn’t support 3G! Man, can you believe that? Oh well, anyway you still could use EDGE, considering Celcom 3G’s coverage isn’t always 3G speed anyway so I think EDGE isn’t all that bad since you still get your pages loaded. I managed to load goldfries.com through the phone and browsing with the trackpad is just neat, connection isn’t that shabby.

Size wise, the Curve 8520 is it is a little bigger than the Nokia N86 in terms of footprint but it’s thinner (side profile). Perhaps we could call it a mini-Bold? I think so, it feels like a smaller version of the Bold.

An interesting model it is, unfortunately no one’s telling us the price since the phone will only be available towards the end of September and the price is to be determined by the carriers (Celcom, DiGi and Maxis).