I often ask myself what makes one smartphone cost £400 and another £200, and the two latest BlackBerry devices offer an opportunity to look closely at how the pricing is worked out. When I look at the Curve 8520 and Bold 9700, the following differences spring to mind-

The Bold 9700 has 3G, hi-res screen, better keyboard (Murray disagrees), better build quality, better battery life and a better camera. Is that worth an extra £200? It depends on how you look at it- in daily use the Curve 8520 works perfectly well and does just about everything the 9700 does, but I could say that when comparing any high-end phone with a budget model. However, the Curve 8520 really does do everything it needs to well and is arguably as good as the 9700 for 95% of tasks. The lower resolution screen is barely noticeable and the keyboard is a smidgen slower than the 9700 in my view, but for everything else it works superbly well.

When choosing between a budget and high-end smartphone it often comes down to desire rather than need and these two phones exemplify that perfectly. If you want to know that you have the best BlackBerry features available buy the 9700. If you want a phone that does almost exactly the same job in a near identical manner buy the 8520. I would have to judge that the 8520 is much better value in my experience, but I still have a 9700 for some strange reason.