Blackberry Pearl (T-Mobile), reviewed.

Posted by John P on March 11th, 2007 Comments Printer-Friendly

Blackberry Pearl 8100

There is a plethora of smartphones available on the market today, whether it be from Blackberry, Palm, or Nokia. Only some of these products are geared at consumers, and Blackberry has one of them, the Blackberry 8100 Pearl.

Now available on both Cingular and T-Mobile, the two biggest GSM carriers in the United States, the Blackberry 8100 Pearl is the newest Blackberry that is marketed towards the consumer. Some of the consumer-oriented features include a media player that plays back a variety of different audio and video formats, and a 1.3MP (megapixel) camera. Unlike some previous Blackberry devices, the Pearl does not include a full QWERTY-style keyboard, but a SureType keyboard with two letters per key in a QWERTY layout.

The Pearl is about the size of a Motorola SLVR candy-bar style cell phone, and is probably the smallest Blackberry to date, at 4.2 x 2.0 x 0.5 inches, and weighing in at 3.1 ounces. The Pearl also packs in a 2.25″ screen that has a resolution of 240 x 260 pixels, displaying a gorgeous 65,000 colors that looked great when viewing photos or web pages on the device.

Some of the standard features Blackberry users have come to know and love include push-email, an integrated address book, calendar, memo pad, and task list, as well as a variety of other features. On the top of the Pearl is an LED status indicator that changes color depending on the message it is trying to give. Red for a new e-mail message, orange for a low battery warning, green for network connection, and blue for… Bluetooth.

In terms of call quality, the audio was decent but almost exactly like Skype, the calls sounded like they were underwater, minus the hiccups and delays. RIM and Blackberry claim that you can get around 3.5 hours of talk time, though we achieved around 5 hours instead.

One thing that stands out amongst the other Blackberry devices is that this gets rid of the thumbwheel most users have been accustomed to, and replaces it with a trackball, hence the name ‘Pearl’. Personally, I like this navigation style over the thumbwheel as it is much easier to use one-handed in my opinion, but it’s just a matter of personal preference.

The camera isn’t exactly something to hit home about, but it’s fine for taking quick snapshots of things. Snapshots only though, as the camera is not capable of taking video. The media player is also good, but it won’t be something to replace your iPod, Zune or other dedicated MP3 player.

We found out shortly before we returned the device to RIM that it also included a microSD slot, which is for some distinct reason, hidden behind the battery. You’re probably not going to be switching between different cards too often then.

For the standard smartphone applications, the e-mail worked great when setup with our own Spark’d email service and with standard POP3 email such as Google’s Gmail. The Pearl is also the first device to include the Blackberry Maps navigation software, though we were unable to test this device due to limited testing periods.

Overall, the Blackberry Pearl is a great smartphone for both the consumer and the business-person and is available today from both Cingular and T-Mobile for around $199.99 and $149.99 respectively with a 2 year contract.

Pros