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This is really the BlackBerry Curve 9320's bread and butter. RIM established its reputation with fantastic email delivery, and even though it's under relentless attack from Apple, Google and Windows competitors, it's fiercely defending itself in this quarter.
Push email is the name of the game here. Be it BES (which you'll have if this is a corporate smartphone) or BIS (which you'll have if it's a personal handset you bought from a retailer), setting up email couldn't be easier, thanks to the wizard that pops up when you first use the BlackBerry Curve 9320.
You can customise how you want it to look and have your emails separate from BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), or from your SMS, or throw the whole lot together into a consolidated inbox. Twitter and Facebook messages will join in the party too if you invite them!
It's not any different to what we've seen before, but once again everything just seems to work. And you can add as many third-party solutions as you want: from Windows Live Messenger to WhatsApp and Google Talk.
With all of these third-party clients, it's hard to know which one to use as your primary messaging method. Which is why RIM has been rather helpful and included a dedicated BBM shortcut key to the side of the BlackBerry Curve 9320.
Maybe it's feeling rattled by the increased take up of WhatsApp since it became cross-platform, but this is one of RIM's big selling points to the youth market. Not only is BBM popular with them, it's also highly encrypted (just ask the Met Police, who came up against said encryption during last year's London riots) and RIM is keen to keep pushing this as hard as it humanly can.
BBM's had a couple of tweaks in the BlackBerry Curve 9320 that deserve a special mention. For example, avatars are now animated (that'll keep the kids happy) and you can also send voice files over the service. But perhaps the most exciting aspect is just how it now links to other social media services.
Yep, Facebook and Twitter: we're looking at you. Although they're three separate services, it's nice to see that they can now work together with BBM - for example, updating one's Twitter status to also cover their BBM status.
In fact, the Social Feeds app enables you to update multiple statuses in one go, which is really helpful. And BBM is integrated with everything from BB Music to Foursquare, and even the Bible app. In fact, when you log into BBM, it gives you a list of all the apps currently in the App World that will work with it. Good work.
As for tapping out those status updates, well typing on the BlackBerry Curve 9320 is passable, but we can't say we were thrilled. We compare the keyboard to the likes of the BlackBerry Bold range, which are perfect, but the small tinny keys don't give you the same satisfying feeling.
It's not that the keyboard on the BlackBerry Curve 9320 is bad, because it isn't at all, but it's not the best out there. For occasional emailers and small hands, though, it shouldn't pose too much of an issue.
