BlackBerry Curve 8520 review: The affordable Curve that put BBM in the hands of millions of teens.
The BBM phone for the masses.
The Curve 8520 made BlackBerry Messenger affordable, introducing the optical trackpad and becoming hugely popular with teens and budget buyers. Its BBM ubiquity — especially among younger users — was a cultural moment just before WhatsApp and the iPhone reshaped messaging.
01Display
42/10042/100 is one of the weaker display results among budget phones of 2009 — 15 points under the average. Check the rows below before buying for this.
02Camera
38/10038/100 is one of the weaker camera results among budget phones of 2009 — 18 points under the average. Check the rows below before buying for this.
03Performance
42/10042/100 is one of the weaker performance results among budget phones of 2009 — 10 points under the average. Check the rows below before buying for this.
04Battery
60/10060/100 is one of the weaker battery results among budget phones of 2009 — 9 points under the average. Check the rows below before buying for this.
05Build
58/10058/100 — right at the average for budget phones of 2009.
06Value
64/10064/100 — right at the average for budget phones of 2009.
- Affordable entry to BBM and push email.
- New optical trackpad.
- Light 106 g with a good keyboard.
- microSD + jack.
- 2G EDGE only — no 3G.
- Tiny QVGA screen.
- 2 MP fixed-focus camera.
- Slow CPU.
How this review is built: every section score, spec row and comparison on this page comes from SpecEagle's tracked catalogue — scores weight measured specs against the 8-phone cohort of budget devices released around the same time. We don't publish invented lab anecdotes. Spot an error? .