This phone has to be one of the most best selling smart phones of all time behind the iconic iPhone 4. It's over two years old, affordable, but I still don't understand why so many people are still going for this phone; in particular after the fiasco that BlackBerry were thrown into earlier this month.

I am an iPhone user, and I was curious to see what the buzz was about with regards to Blackberry. My friend has the 8520, so I decided to have a go with an open mind. I was shocked with what I found.

The handset felt cheap, the interface seemed poorly built, and I found it an absolute nightmare to use. Then again, you can't say that Blackberry don't make fabulous handsets, as I found their latest version of the Bold amazing to use when I have had an hands on test. So is there still a buzz for the BlackBerry 8520; besides from the appeal of BBM that Apple are slowly taking over with the introduction of iMessage...

You've answered your own question there .. cheap .. that's the attraction.

But look at the other budget handsets on the market... they look good and feel like that have been well made, but I thought that the BlackBerry was so light and breakable, even if I just dropped it on a desk it would smash to smitheries. i'm not the only one to think this; look at the amount of people that own this phone who go around with smashed screens and backs that don't match the colour of the handset...

Indeed. It's cheap, popular with teens, doesn't even have 3G. But it's good for BBM and Facebook and Twitter updates. If that's all you need from a phone then it's ideal.

Well I think if you dropped an iphone 4 and a BB 8520 the Blackberry would come off best, I've no axe to grind, I have an iphone 4 myself and an old Blackberry through work, the 8520 may be cheaply made and easier to sustain superficial damage but seems to keep on working. I still have an old BB 8100, its battle scarred but still works, despite its creaky plastic build and the actual call quality is first rate.

I would imagine that most of the mass sales are to corporate users. My company uses blackberry, and all the field based colleague have an 8520. It offers all the essential BlackBerry functions (email, phone, txt, bbm) and it cheap for the IT department to roll out.
Corporate users don't need 1000 apps, a great camera etc... What they need is a reliable phone, with a long battery life that is relatively resilliant. It may feel crap quality, but they are quite tough. tougher than an iPhone at any rate.

They also appeal to the low end of the consumer market. My younger family members all have curves, as do most of their school friends. They can BBM and Facebook, and the phone is available from £10 a month on most networks, so it is affordable for the parents. With BBM they don't need to worry about using too many messages either.

Aside from fairly decent battery life (an easy 4-5 days), unparallelled enterprise connectivity, and nothing betters them for sending emails whilst away from the office.

I've never found the interface on the BB difficult to use - its simple, its easy. Although I still prefer the click wheel arrangement from the earlier generations.

Other than on-device encryption (which I think the iPhone supports too) what is so great today about BlackBerry email compared to the solutions on other platforms?

On device encryption is a biggie. Simple things like mailing lists, read receipts and delivery receipts (I have a mac and they haven't even implemented read receipts on Mac OS yet, let alone on the iPhone.
Did you know that the iPhone can only store 200 emails in the inbox at a time? Many corporate blackberry users might receive that many emails a day.


But most importantly ease of implementation and management by IT departments.

Companies using BES have total control over the handsets, so if lost/stolen they can be locked and wiped remotely etc... As well as a corporate security policy that locks users out of certain features. All of these can be managed centrally. No other handset offers this.

Since iOS 5 it can cache 1000 message per mailbox on the phone.

iOS has had this for sometime now. Enterprises can deploy configuration profiles to set the iphone up as necessary. Also they can remote wipe and lock etc.

you can also do that on the htc phones as well

It looks like Apple has caught up big time with the needs of enterprise users! Still a pricey handset to deploy in the field though.

Apart from not offering a keyboard, and not offering anything like the battery life of something like the 8520.

I've used plenty of differing devices over the years, and no touchscreen is anywhere near as natural/easy for typing a long mail as a physical keyboard.

And an enterprise connected email device that typically lasts a day in normal usage? Thats close on useless for business trips. I've known plenty of people who kept their old Nokia 6310/6310i for as long as possible prior to being forced to change - purely down to its sheer practicality, being able to go for a solid 7+ days without needing a charge was one less hassle to deal with while away.

That's very true, and the physical robustness is a major factor why Blackberry is still best for the enterprises.