We also groused about the Pearl's lack of stereo headphones and the use of a mini-stereo jack that wouldn't take standard headphones. RIM fixed that in the Curve as well, shipping it with a hands-free headset that includes stereo earbuds and that plugs into a standard 3.5mm jack.

And we groused about slow typing on the Pearl's 20-key SureType keyboard. RIM has fixed that too, replacing the SureType keyboard (artificial intelligence-based auto-completion typing) with a full 35-key QWERTY keyboard.

Much else remains the same as in the Pearl, which is no bad thing.

The Curve, a quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM phone that works in roaming mode across North America and in 190 countries (for voice - 130 for data), is arguably the Pearl refined, albeit with a more PDAish form factor. It's shorter and thinner, but wider, with, as noted, some improved features and functionality. It's not perfect and it may not be right for everyone, but it's pretty darn good.

AT&T Wireless sells the Curve online for $200 with a two-year contract (with mail-in rebate) or $500 with a one-year contract. Data plans range from $35 to $95 a month. Voice is extra. In Canada, Rogers has the Curve for $350 (three-year plan), $450 (two years) or $500 (one year - all prices in Canadian dollars). Voice/data plans range from $45 to $110 a month.

RIM claims the Curve is the smallest smartphone available with a full QWERTY keyboard, which sounds plausible. It measures 4.2 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches (107x15.5mm) and weighs about 3.9 ounces (111g), a few grams more than the Pearl. That means it easily fits in a shirt pocket, without the saggy bulge. It's also one of the nicest feeling smartphones I've tried—well, since the Pearl.

The Curve's screen is excellent—a backlit TFT LCD (240 x 320 pixels, 65,000 colors). Like the Pearl, this BlackBerry includes a microSD card slot (in the battery compartment). No card is included, however, just the 64MB of device memory. This means you will have to invest in a card if you want to use the Curve as a media player—very little device memory remains for data. (You can now purchase 4GB microSD cards for about $100.)

The e-mail experience is, as always, excellent. You can receive mail from up to 10 accounts, including a mix of corporate and POP (ISP hosted) accounts. Nothing new there. Battery life is, also as always, excellent - four hours talk time, 17 days standby, according to RIM.

As a phone, the Curve sounded very good. (I tested it on the Rogers Wireless network in Canada.) RIM says this is partly thanks to superior noise cancellation technology. Like the Pearl and other recent BlackBerries, it also includes a surprisingly good, relatively distortion-free speaker phone. And you can use it with Bluetooth hands-free headsets. Bluetooth set-up is similar to the Pearl and worked well.

You can also use the Curve (and other recent BlackBerries) as a modem to connect a laptop over the cellular network. None of the documentation for the Curve, including the online User Manual, mention anything about this feature, however. I found a BlackBerry forum posting that explained the somewhat involved process of setting it up.

According to the forum poster, it hasn't worked successfully for all carriers, but does for most of the majors, including Rogers. I was able to connect on the Rogers EDGE network at 115 Kbps. (This was according to Windows. It actually seemed faster, especially for cached sites such as Google.)

The application suite includes the usual: personal information management (address book, calendar, tasks, memos etc.), instant messaging (BlackBerry, Yahoo and Google), standard and WAP browsers, plus the Media player (music, video, ringtones, pictures) and online Maps applications introduced with the Pearl. The TeleNav maps are only available as a 30-day trial, though. Then you have to pay.

Aside from the full QWERTY keyboard, the physical user interface is similar to the Pearl's. The front face features the same tiny trackball in place of the traditional BlackBerry thumb wheel—it works as well or better in my opinion—plus dedicated Start, End, Back and Menu keys. The number pad is embedded in the keyboard, the number keys set off from others with two-tone black and silver coloring. In most applications, you have to hold the ALT key while pressing a number key to get a number. In phone mode, you get numbers without pressing ALT.

On the left edge, there's a 3.5mm headphone jack (which takes standard stereo headphones), the USB jack and a dedicated button for activating the voice dialing application. On the right edge, you'll find volume up and down buttons and a dedicated camera button that turns the camera on if it's off and releases the shutter if it's on. This is all similar to the Pearl.

The software interface is similar to other recent BlackBerries. The customizable quick-pick home screen shows a few application links, but pressing the dedicated menu button takes you to a screen showing all application and utility links.

Don't get too excited about the extra .7 megapixels of resolution from the Curve's camera (compared to the Pearl's). To my eyes, it still produces fuzzy, noisy pictures, like most phone cameras. The best images are maybe good enough to print at 3 x 5 inches. Most are only worth viewing on a small screen.

As with the Pearl, the built-in flash still doesn't fire very often when in Auto mode (and will run your battery down faster if you fire it for every shot). This means the camera takes pictures indoors at shutter speeds too slow to hold the camera steady, with the result that most images are blurred. The advertised 5X zoom ratio is a myth. It's digital, not optical, zoom, meaning the camera selects a portion of the scene in the center of the frame. You don't really get any closer. Also, still no video.

The inclusion of a stereo headset (which doubles as a hands-free phone) is a welcome improvement over the Pearl (which only included a monaural hands-free phone). Also welcome is the fact that the headset plugs into a standard 3.5mm stereo jack rather than the mini-jack used on the Pearl and some other recent smartphones. This means you can plug in virtually any stereo headphone.

The Curve actually sounds pretty good as a music player, though in tests using audiophile headphones, it was no match for my three-year-old Creative Zen player, the benchmark I use for comparing the sound from digital music players. The music player supports a long list of formats.

With the Curve, RIM is introducing a new Roxio Media Manager module for the BlackBerry Desktop Manager 4.2.2, the program that runs on your PC and manages synchronizing data between computer and BlackBerry.

The module works like PC media manager programs for MP3 players, letting you select files from any folder on the host computer (or devices connected on a local network) and drag and drop them to any folder on the BlackBerry or an installed memory card. You can also set it up to automatically import new files to its library as you add them to your PC. And it includes a Photo Suite with basic editing and slideshow functionality.

Sonic Solutions, the company that developed the software, may not have worked out all the bugs yet. It did not install cleanly on my plain-vanilla Dell laptop. It stalled in the middle and reported a missing installation file, then somehow found it after some clicking around on the error screens. And when I launched the application, it kept telling me to "activate mass storage mode on the device," even when that had already been done.

Bottom line: I'd choose the Curve over the Pearl every time, but those who don't like the squarer form factor you get when you make room for a full QWERTY keyboard may not like it as much. Kudos to RIM for correcting some of the flaws in the Pearl, but the camera still stinks and it would have been nice to include even a 1GB microSD card (worth about $30 at retail) so you don't immediately have to go out and spend more money to use the thing for what it was designed.