Canadian mobile phone carrier Rogers Wireless and handset maker Research In Motion have announced today that the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone has been released on the operator's airwaves. The new device comes as the latest addition to Rogers' lineup of Curve models and is expected to deliver an intuitive and efficient mobile experience to the carrier's users.

Available from Rogers in two color versions, black and violet, the new BlackBerry Curve 8520 comes with email and messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) capabilities, as well as with integration with popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It also comes with a touch-sensitive trackpad and with dedicated multimedia keys so that users can easily control music and videos. Moreover, they can also enjoy built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) connectivity, as well as support for Rogers' TalkSpot service, which enables them to make unlimited Canada-wide calls over Wi-Fi, while paying only $15 per month for it.

“BlackBerry is already the top-selling smartphone brand in North America and this latest addition to our line-up is designed to expand its appeal even further,” said Carlo Chiarello, vice president, Product Management, Research In Motion. “The new BlackBerry Curve 8520 is an incredibly approachable smartphone with easy-to-use messaging, social networking and multimedia features that will undoubtedly help more Canadians decide to make the switch from a traditional cell phone to a BlackBerry smartphone.”

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone also comes towards Rogers Wireless' customers with a full-QWERTY keyboard, a 320 x 240 pixel display, a 2-megapixel photo snapper, a 512MHz processor and 256MB of flash memory, microSD/SDHC memory card slot with support for up to 32GB of additional storage space, Bluetooth 2.0, support for BlackBerry Internet Service and BlackBerry Enterprise Server, access to BlackBerry App World, full HTML browsing, urMusic application, 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, and BlackBerry MediaSync.

BlackBerry Curve 8520 can already be purchased from Rogers for $99.99 upon the signing of a three-year contract agreement with the carrier for a minimum plan of $45 per month. The violet variant of the device will come within the following weeks.