Blackberry has just launched its fourth phone to run on the latest BlackBerry 7 OS – and it comes in the shape of a Curve, one of the cheaper ranges to come out of the RIM stable.

This review was rather badly timed for Research in Motion because as we were testing the latest BlackBerry we were hit by the great BlackBerry Server Meltdown storm of 2011. We’re not going to hold that against the Curve 9360 in this review, but please don’t do that again, will you RIM?

The display looks good. It’s a 2.44inch Liquid Graphics screen, which benefits from a great 480x360 pixel resolution. BUT, while it looks good, it can’t feel good, because this is NOT a touchscreen.

Okay, so we realise that the 9360 is a budget handset, but we reckon that omitting to include a touchscreen is a pretty big deal. There are plenty of basic phones on the market that cost far less than the Curve that at least manage to include a touch display. It just seems plain weird to have to navigate the OS without a touchscreen – it feels old-fashioned and clunky.

Neat freak

Sizewise, the Blackberry Curve 9360 is pretty neat. It weighs a teeny 99g and measures just 109x60x11mm. It has a slightly curved reverse (hence the name) and is a mere 0.5mm thicker than the slimmest BlackBerry handset there ever was – the Bold 9900.

On the top of the phone sits a touch-sensitive locking key and the 3.5mm audio jack, while the right side is home to the volume rocker, mute button and what is dubbed the ‘convenience’ key. This can be customised to do anything from opening BlackBerry Messenger to voice dialling. Its default function is as a hard camera button. The left side is where you’ll find the micro USB port.

BlackBerry 7 OS has some quirks that are all its own, and you’ll have read about it in many reviews before this. It offers five panels of icons, including Frequents, Downloads, Media, Favourites and All. There is also a useful notification bar at the top, where all your alerts for Facebook, Twitter, and BlackBerry Messenger 6 will appear, once you’ve set up your accounts.

One download we really like is the WhatsApp – this is an open messenger platform that is akin to BBM, but can be used on any phone, not just BlackBerrys.

Sitting under the keyboard you’ll find a row of function keys for End, Back, Menu and Answer. This is also where you’ll find the trackpad, which is what you’ll use to navigate the OS, in place of a touchscreen, The QWERTY keyboard is excellent, as it is on most other BlackBerry handsets, and offers a smooth typing experience.

Compared with its bigger sibling the Bold 9900, you’ll see the 9360 has a lot of similar features, despite its lower pricetag. As well as the same operating system, it also has NFC for making contactless payments, a five-megapixel camera and pretty much the same connectivity offering (A-GPS, Wi-Fi and HSPDA). However, in other ways you would hardly know the two of them are related.

For instance, the 9900 boasts a 1.2GHz chip, while the 9360 has a measly 800MHz processor and 512MB of onboard memory compared with its bigger sibling’s 8GB offering. The active RAM has also been reduced to just 512MB from 768MB, which makes for a generally slower performance.

While we’re aware that retail prices for tech products are rarely actually seen when you go to buy something, the 9360’s price is just too high. To buy SIM-free you’re looking at more than £300, and on a contract you’ll have to pay more than 20 quid a month for a deal that offers very little in the way of texts and call minutes. And since BlackBerry brought out the last Curve, the market has seen a host of Android handsets appear that feature decent QWERTY keyboards (the Samsung Galaxy Pro springs to mind) as well as touchscreens and a choice of hundreds of thousands of apps from Android Market, even if their build quality is a little lower.

Our conclusion

Having to use a trackpad instead of a touchscreen is just too dated for us – so if you’re tempted to buy a BlackBerry on a contract we suggest you spend that bit more and get the far more desirable Bold 9900.