Merry 3rd day of Christmas to you on Pocket-lint and welcome to our solid gold gift guide for what to get for your loved ones this year. We’ve seen a little home entertainment on Day 2, something for just about everyone on Day 1, but today we’re getting specific. Today, it’s all about a guaranteed winner if you happen to have someone of this particular age group and gender in your life. Just check they don’t have one already.

Whether you intend it to be a first phone, a step up to something smart or just a way to keep your loved one quiet, the only place to go in the Christmas bargain mobile space in 2010 is...

BlackBerry Curve 8520 Pink Edition

What is it?

QWERTY Smartphone

Who’s it for?

Teenage girl

How much is it?

£129.95

Delivery Speed?

Next Working Day

It’s a smartphone

While all your daughter’s/little sister’s less cool friends will be running with dodgy feature phones, your loved one can clutch a fully-fledged smartphone in her pocket instead. She’ll be able to surf the internet and do all sorts of other hip things that her buddies will be dead jel about. She’ll also feel like a bit of an adult. It’s a coming of age thing and you’ll have helped her safely cross that threshold into the terrible horrors of responsibility.

It’s great value

As smartphone’s go, £129.95 is seriously good value. The Curve isn’t BlackBerry’s top of the line by any means, but it brings you 90 per cent of the functionality and for 50 per cent of the price. There’s no 3G, there’s no GPS and you don’t get the BlackBerry OS 6 software, but the older version is perfectly good - just not quite as glitzy.

No one else will have one

For all the good reasons. A bunch of your giftee’s crew will have BlackBerrys, some even the Curve, but the limited edition Pink one will be a relatively rare spot. So, not only will she be original and therefore cool, but she’ll also have a nice pretty phone too.

There’s no contract

Buying someone a phone can be a bit of a poisoned chalice if you end up tying them into a contract. On the one hand, they could end up spending more over the term than the gift actually cost or, worse still, if it’s your daughter, you could! So, PAYG is the way to go and that’s exactly what this killer gift provides.

It’s the best for email

The BlackBerry OS is simply the best emailing platform around. Take our word for it and the word of any BlackBerry fanboy if you're mad enough to ask them about it. If you do, you’re going to get some terrible earful about email. No one wants to know the technical details about email, just that it’s good and that it works. Well, the email on the Curve does and very, very well too.

It’s got the best QWERTY keyboard

The least dull reason why the email system is so good is because most BlackBerry handsets are famous for housing what is widely regarded as one of most superior, if not the best, full QWERTY keyboards in the business. Those teenaged thumbs can scamper across it at the speed of light and the little knobbles on each key make it impossible to slip off or hit the wrong letter. It’s what’s got RIM where it is today.

It’s got all your social networks integrated

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, you name it, BlackBerry App World will allow you to download some software to make that mobile phone into a social networking machine. Granted, you’re going to entirely lose your daughter/sister to her new smartphone as soon as she figures this out, but she’ll be happy and less difficult to deal with - unless you tell her to put her phone down, of course.

It comes with the perfect teen chat app

BBM. We’re talking about BBM here, and for those that don’t know, that’s BlackBerry Messenger. It’s all the rage with the kids apparently and it’s what all the young cats (kittens?) are using to communicate with one another. So long as you’ve got some kind of small amount of data package and a vague mobile connection you can send pictures, maps, links and IMs to individuals or your BBM group at large.

You’ll get your computer back

The Curve 8520 is Wi-Fi enabled meaning that your giftee will be able to sit and do all her social networking at home from the sofa instead of hogging the house computer spending half the evening on Facebook. In short, you’ll get your laptop back.

It’s an app phone

Yes, that £129.95 gets you not only a smartphone, but a smartphone with a slightly respectable app store too. On the one hand, BlackBerry App World is rather dwarfed by its Android and iPhone competitors but, on the other, it will mean that your giftee is less likely to throw away her pocket money on piles of shovelware. You can still get most of the good stuff on BlackBerry if not quite everything you’re looking for.

There’s a camera but no flash

This may seem like a problem but, in effect, what this means is that you’re never going to stumble across pictures of your teenage daughter out drunk with her mates in the depths of an alcopops binge because she won’t be able to take them. Instead, there’ll only be the squeaky clean snaps of what happens in the daytime. Ignorance is bliss.

It’s what every teenage girl wants

Pink, BBM, social networking? What more could a young lady want to show off in the playground and use to keep up with what the rest of the gang are up to? The only reason you haven’t bought it already is because you’ve only got £20 to spend or the £400 required for an iPhone.

FULL REVIEW

Share you thoughts on hot gift tips for Christmas 2010 in the comments below and don't forget to take a look at the other 11 days of Christmas on Pocket-lint.