Research In Motion (RIM) today introduced the BlackBerry Curve smartphone, which is known as Blackberry 8300.

The BlackBerry Curve features a liquid silver finish, chrome highlights, smooth edges and soft curves. It is a full-featured smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard and boasts an impressively small and lightweight design at 4.2'' x 2.4'' x 0.6'' and approximately 3.9 oz. The ultra-bright 320x240 display brings images and video to life and includes RIM's light sensing technology that automatically adjusts backlighting levels for indoor, outdoor and dark environments. The handset also features RIM's innovative trackball navigation system.

The BlackBerry Curve comes with a 2 megapixel camera, complete with 5x digital zoom, built-in flash, self-portrait mirror and full screen viewfinder. The Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP/AVRCP) is supported, and dedicated volume controls are conveniently located on the side of the handset.

A powerful new desktop media manager is also included with the BlackBerry Curve. The media player on the BlackBerry Curve has been refined, allowing users to search for music by simply typing the title, genre, artist or album name. Videos can also be played in full screen mode. For added storage of music, videos and pictures, the BlackBerry Curve comes with a microSD expansion slot. It supports up to 2GB cards that are available today and will automatically support 4GB cards that are expected to become available later this year.

The BlackBerry Curve offers many convenient phone features including Speaker Independent Voice Recognition (SIVR) for Voice Activated Dialing (VAD), Bluetooth® 2.0 support for hands-free use with headsets, car kits and Bluetooth peripherals, quad-band operation for global roaming, dedicated 'send', 'end', and 'mute' keys, smart dialing, speed dialing, conference calling, call forwarding, noise cancellation technology to offset background noise, a low-distortion speakerphone for hands-free conversations and support for polyphonic, mp3 and MIDI ring tones.

The BlackBerry Curve (model number: 8300) will be available through wireless carriers around the world, including AT&T in the U.S., beginning this spring.