BlackBerry Curve 9350 Goes Live at U.S. Cellular

In the middle of a BlackBerry outage, U.S. Cellular decided to add the Curve 9350 smartphone to its portfolio.

The handset is available is available online and in stores starting today. Customers can purchase the BlackBerry Curve 9350 for $49.99 after a $100 mail-in-rebate along with purchase of a data plan.

However, U.S. Cellular throws in a special offer for those who want to switch carriers. Starting this week through November 20, those who switch to U.S Cellular with Switch for Free offer will be able to get the BlackBerry Curve 9350 for free after $100 mail-in-rebate, along with free activation.

BlackBerry Curve 9350 is one of the affordable BlackBerry 7 devices that were announced by Research in Motion (RIM) back in August.

The new smartphone comes with the usual portrait QWERTY BlackBerry keyboard, complemented by an optical track-pad.

With BlackBerry 7, users will be provided with enhanced performance, including one of the fastest and smoothest Internet browser. 

“The BlackBerry Curve 9350 combines everything customers love about BlackBerry smartphones with new features that make connecting with friends, family and business easier than ever. At U.S. Cellular, we offer devices that help our customers simplify their life and stay organized, which is one of the reasons why we have the happiest customers in wireless,” said Edward Perez, vice president of sales and marketing operations for U.S. Cellular.

The phone comes bundled with new features and apps, including BBM 6 (BlackBerry Messenger), the BlackBerry Music store powered by Amazon, which provides access to a huge catalog of music, a new Social Feeds app, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

In addition, users can browse throug thousand of apps on BlackBerry App World, and customize their Curve 9350 as they see fit.

The phone's hardware configuration comprises a single core 800MHz processor, 512 MB of internal memory, 512 MB of ROM, microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB) and a 2.44-inch display with 480 x 360 pixels resolution.