After receiving our BlackBerry Curve 8530 just last week, we’re taking the time to look at every aspect of it, bringing out all the pros and cons.  A really interesting concept we love is the media buttons up top where we normally see the mute and lock button.  No matter what screen you’re on, easily push the middle play/pause button up top to open up the media folder.  Look at is as another shortcut convenience key other than the two on the sides.

When playing or streaming music, one thing that bothered us was that the volume bar does not pop up on the screen as it does with other OS 5.0 devices.  For example, if I am playing music in the background on my BlackBerry Bold 9700, pressing the volume up and down buttons will make a volume bar appear in the middle of the screen where it will show the exact levels.  On the 8530, it appears to stay built in to the media player.  An OS update was not yet performed on the device, so perhaps we’ll see that fix in a later version (if not already).

The volume goes quite high but of course does not have as crisp sound quality as the Bold 9700 does.  Keep in mind that the 8530 is a lower end Berry but definitely gives the best bang for your buck.  So the speaker goes pretty loud, high enough to disturb any folks in your room as well.

We’ve been testing skySYNC on it the past few days as well which works a charm. When using skySYNC, media gets downloaded pretty fast through their servers where all your music is remotely stored and easily accessed from any BlackBerry device.  For those unaware of skySYNC, and are looking to get in on the private beta, shoot an email to skysync at pocketberry dot com.

The 7Digital music suite works good on it too, just as any other phone would.  What we realized was the regular EVDO just seemed oh so sluggish downloading tunes, but when 3G is up and running have no fear.

Video playback was no surprise.  We knew what to expect exactly.  If you used any BlackBerry after the 83xx series, then you noticed a huge decline in screen quality.  Ranking at 320 x 240, you’ll be able to get by just fine watching videos, but definitely will notice some non-smooth edges and pixels.  YouTube isn’t even an issue, given that it’s so far working with terrible quality on every BlackBerry platform so far anyway.

-by Mac Jadalhack

Related posts:

1. BlackBerry Media Sync 3.0 releases
2. BlackBerry Media Sync gets upgraded to v2.0
3. Beta Testers Wanted: Play all your iTunes music from your BlackBerry with skySYNC
4. Verizon and RIM announce the BlackBerry Curve 8530
5. Verizon BlackBerry Curve 8530 gets labeled as “Curve 2″
6. BlackBerry Curve 8530 officially available from Verizon Wireless
7. BlackBerry Curve 8530 officially launches from Sprint
8. Chalk Media says acquisition by RIM completed
9. BlackBerry Curve 8520 goes EVDO as a 8530
10. First Impressions on the Verizon BlackBerry Curve 8530