The Demo Site

The new BlackBerry Curve 8520 leaves me feeling like Sonny, the young boy who befriended Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. I know it is trying to tell me something. I just cannot work out what it is.

What's that, Curvy? I have a Facebook update? No. Is it an instant message? Or what about a phone call? No, not that either. Is someone offering me their "sexxxi pix" on Twitter? Unfortunately not. Perhaps Uncle Wayne has fallen down a mineshaft again? Or has your battery just run out?

First things first. I did not read the manual – frankly, there wasn't one, though that may just have been because the box that I received had already been pilfered - but having used the very easy-to-navigate setup wizard I had the BlackBerry device synced seamlessly with my webmail, so I was not overly concerned. I then slid across to the BlackBerry Apps store – which for some unknown reason is not on the home screen collection of six icons but buried in the BlackBerry menu underneath it – and downloaded a few applications. Well, whoever had the handset before me had already stuck TwitterBerry and Facebook on it and I just added a few free news apps, but downloading them is a doddle, even though the device lacks 3G connectivity. Having been scared out of my skin on numerous occasions by unfamiliar handsets suddenly ringing at me with ear-splitting force, I then switched the whole thing to silent via the profiles icon. I logged into a few of the apps and got sidetracked by my emails.

Then the buzzing started. Ah-ha, it will have alerted me to something. But there is no big friendly message on the home screen telling me why it wanted my attention. Then it went off again. Still nothing. But wait – what's this at the top of the screen? Squinting closely, there is a little email icon with a number next to it. Oh, and a Facebook icon with the number 2 next to it. And a weird clock thing. Hunting around the BlackBerry's menus (and trust me, there are a lot of them: every application has its own menus – just click the Blackberry icon or the trackpad; and different bits of the same application have different menus) I discovered that its default setting is to alert you to absolutely everything. The email icon is easy enough to understand, but what two things I had from Facebook I never did find out, despite numerous visits to the application. In desperation, I ended up pawing at the little icons, wishing it had a touchscreen, like a drunken late-night shopper at Tesco who has opted for the self-service checkout rather than face slurring at a human being. I kept expecting the device to shout "unidentified moron in the graphical user interface".