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"Despite its just-average signal strength, the 8900 is an excellent voice phone, with calls sounding especially loud and clear on T-Mobile's 2G EDGE network You can even fiddle with the bass and treble controls to find the most appealing sound. Call delivery sounds terrific on the other end; in my test calls, no background noise made it through..."

"Call quality was satisfactory. There was some minimal background noise that made audio quality a little less pristine than some other smartphones we've tested, but nothing that prevented us from having a conversation.... Our friends reported a couple instances of warbled audio, but otherwise no major complaints."

"Turning our attention to sound quality, the earpiece and speakerphone are both clear as a bell. We could've used another couple notches of volume on the earpiece…"

"In case you actually want to use your BlackBerry as a phone (it can do that!) sound quality is a mixed bag. Callers on the other end heard us perfectly — even while we played a high-decibel game of Halo. But voice quality on our end was kind of unacceptable — on more than one occasion, conversations sounded like they took place in a wind tunnel."

"Overall, we were pleased with the call quality offered by the Curve 8900. While talking with a friend...we had to ask them to speak up twice but didn’t notice any missed words or interference during our call. A message left on a landline from a busy street in Manhattan sounded excellent, even though we could hear some taxis honking in the background."

"The other upside of the integrated Wi-Fi is UMA support. This means you can make and receive unlimited calls over a wireless network and not have the minutes deducted from your cellular plan. The caveat is that you will need to sign for T-Mobile's Unlimited HotSpot Calling plan, which starts at $9.99 per month on top of an existing T-Mobile plan."

"Call quality rated extremely high on both ends, with crisp voice, and calling parties reporting that the Curve came through exceptionally loud on their end."

"Call audio quality on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 is exceptionally good, especially when on UMA based VoIP connections. Reception on GSM networks seems perhaps slightly better than on the 8320, but not much so."

"Video playback was quite impressive. We checked out a couple of clips, including an MP4 file, and found playback to be smooth and the picture looked great on the Curve's high-resolution screen."

"The music player handles MP3, AAC, and WMA files, and the phone comes with an app to sync your playlists with iTunes (non-DRM files only). Music sounded great on both wired and Bluetooth headphones. MPEG-4 video files look gorgeous...but Roxio Media Manager, which comes with the BlackBerry, is slow and crashes occasionally."

"The 8900 features a simple but capable media player and -- more importantly, we think -- a 3.5mm audio jack, making the phone a viable PMP replacement. On the high side, the audio quality over the jack is among the best we've ever heard from a phone.... On the flip, though, the jack's on the side of the phone...[and] we also would've like to have seen a finer volume control."

"Viewing videos and pictures on the 2.5-inch, 480 x 320 pixel screen is fantastic; especially since the screen's ambient light sensors adjust brightness deftly no matter how dark a room we were in."

"The Curve 8900’s display is perfect for viewing videos, and thanks to its 3.5mm headphone jack and included earbuds, it’s a great music device as well."

"Though BlackBerrys have always been held up as productivity phones, rather than entertainment phones, we found that the Curve made a perfectly likeable [personal music player] right off the bat.... The fact that Pandora and Slacker are both available for free on BlackBerry App World doesn’t hurt its music cred, either."

"From a multimedia perspective, the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 is a very capable device, much more so than the older 8300 series devices were."