As announced at the beginning of April, Sprint now offers to its subscribers the BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone, the latest from RIM's Curve family.

The handset is available as of today, the 9th of May, from Sprint's website as well as via its retail stores across the US. Curve 8330's "regular" retail price is said to be $599, but Sprint offers the smartphone for just $179.99, after a $100 mail-in rebate. Of course, this price is only available with a contract agreement for 2 years. Buyers will also receive, together with the 8330, a 1GB memory card, a wired stereo headset and a USB cable, so it all seems a good deal for users who need a new business-oriented handset.

Also offered (in the US) by Verizon and Alltel, BlackBerry Curve 8330 is not too different from the previous Curve devices released by RIM. The new smartphone weighs 4 ounces (113 grams), measures 4.2 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches (106.6 x 61 x 15.2 millimeters) and packs pretty nice features.

The Sprint-exclusive features of 8330 include: Sprint Navigation (based on the built-in GPS of the handset) with real-time traffic alerts, turn-by-turn driving directions, 3D maps and more than 10 million interest points, Sprint TV, for the latest video news and weather forecasts, locally or nationally and Sprint Music Store, which allows users to quickly download music.

The rest of the specs that BlackBerry 8330 offers are: a 320 x 240 pixel screen, advanced Internet and email capabilities, a 2 Megapixel camera with flash and video, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, media player, 3.5mm stereo jack, miniUSB and so on. The smartphone's battery should last for 260 minutes in talk-time mode and up to 11 days in stand-by mode.