BlackBerry Curve 8520 Smartphone Coming to T-Mobile Aug. 5

T-Mobile announced it will be offering a BlackBerry Curve this summer-the 8520 smartphone.
 
The Curve 8520, like the BlackBerry Tour, is a quad-band world phone, offering support for EDGE/GPRS/GSM 850/900/1,800/1,900MHz networks, which means voice and data coverage are likely to be available just about wherever your travels take you.
 
In addition to 3G coverage, built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g capabilities enable Wi-Fi-supported Web surfing and calls. With T-Mobile's Unlimited HotSpot Calling service, users receive unlimited nationwide calling to their five "favorite" friends.
 
The 8520 offers quick access to e-mail (up to 10 accounts are supported), as well as messaging, popular social networking sites and multimedia entertainment options. Device navigation comes via a touch-sensitive optical trackpad, and there are dedicated keys-a first, according to T-Mobile-along the top of the device for one-touch access to music and videos.
 
And of course there's a full QWERTY keyboard, an expected feature from RIM.
 
"More and more cell phone users are choosing to upgrade to a smartphone, and the new BlackBerry Curve 8520 will undoubtedly convince many more people to make the switch," said Carlo Chiarello, RIM' s vice president of product management, in a statement. "It delivers all the great messaging, social networking and multimedia features that have made BlackBerry the top-selling smartphone brand in the United States."
 
During RIM's first-quarter fiscal year 2010 earnings announcement, co-CEO Jim Balsillie told investors, quoting numbers from IDC, "Having grown market share from roughly 40 percent to 55 percent in the past two quarters, BlackBerry now accounts for more than all the other smartphone sales in the U.S. combined, and more than double our nearest competitor."
 
The Curve 8520 comes with 256MB of flash memory and a 512MHz processor, voice-activated dialing, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2-megapixel camera with zoom and video recording, and a media player with BlackBerry Media Sync, for syncing music from iTunes or a Windows Media Player. A microSD card slot supports up to 16GB of additional memory, and likely 32GB cards, once they're available.
 
The Curve 8520 will be available at T-Mobile online retail stores, as well as Wal-Mart and other retail locations, beginning Aug. 5, in a choice of Frost or Black finishes. Pricing has yet to be confirmed.