The latest addition to the BlackBerry Curve line, the 8520, was launched yesterday at a function held in Melrose Arch. Research In Motion (RIM) is punting the device as a BlackBerry for the masses, since the 8520 is in a slightly lower price bracket than other BlackBerry devices.

There are a few features on the 8520 that struck our fancy, most notably the touch-sensitive optical trackpad which seems to work much better than the old trackballs. The onboard Wi-Fi is useful especially when surfing the Web, since the device does not include 3G connectivity, only EDGE. EDGE performance though wasn\'t too bad, we performed a couple of quick browsing speed tests with the 8520 and the 3G enabled BlackBerry Storm, and the new Curve actually opened up some pages faster than the Storm.

The 8520 includes dedicated media player buttons on top of the device, and it runs on a 512 MHz next generation processor. Unfortunately it offers a boring 2 megapixel camera and a paltry 265 MB flash memory, yawn.

The BlackBerry 8520 is available on both Vodacom and MTN from today. For more info visit www.blackberry.com/curve8520.