Blackberry Pearl - Product Review

The Blackberry Pearl T-Mobile cellphone tops my list of high tech gadget gifts. Its predecessor, the Blackberry 7100, remains massively popular with busy professionals. It's all about remote email access: The high-speed wireless system delivers emails to people in high-pressure business quickly, and usually flawlessly (I've noticed a tendency for the Blackberry 7100 to freeze up, particularly during peak hours). This new version, the Blackberry Pearl 8100, shows RIM's attempts to get in on the Sidekick/Treo's casual user-type consumer end of the market, just as the 7100 has captured much of the professional business consumer market.

The Pearl replaces the 7100's scroll wheel with a centrally-located scroll button, and comes loaded with multimedia capabilities, digital camera for quick pics, much faster internet browsing capabilities, and an SD slot - that's a Secure Digital reader for flash memory cards, good for storing MP3s. The Blackberry Pearl is also astonishingly streamlined and beautiful; addictive eye candy for technophiles, they're not called Crackberrys for nothing!

People that prefer the older model T-Mobile Blackberry, by and large, work in business environments that rely on dealing with many emails efficiently. Those that I've talked to, say that they'd never upgrade to the Blackberry Pearl because of the non-QWERTY keyboard. Fast composing and sending of reply emails is their main concern, although it goes beyond saying that both Blackberrys are also cellphones. They worry that the non-QWERTY keyboard of the Pearl would slow down their correspondence and get words wrong. The Blackberry Pearl uses a SureType keyboard, with two letter options per key, but with the letters themselves still laid out in the standard QWERTY keyboard fashion.

Now that I've tried out the Blackberry Pearl, I must say that those guys holding onto their precious Blackberry 7100s don't have anything to worry about. The SureType keyboard on the T-Mobile's Pearl provides letter combo choices and tries to figure out what words you intend in context of the preceding and following words - and usually gets it right. Really! The only issue I had was with a couple of three-letter words that use the same letter combo as very common three-letter words, like "the" and "are." Other than that, the SureType technology really seems to have a great ability to get the words right. Oh, and one more caveat: It helps if you don't look at the screen while typing on the SureType keyboard. It looks like gobbledegook until you finish the sentence, and then the RIM technology sorts out the mess. If you always look at the screen while typing, this can be hugely disconcerting. And now you can get the Blackbery Pearl with Cingular wireless service too.

So, leave the Sidekicks for Paris Hilton and her ilk. The Blackberry Pearl is tops in my book; whether you can't take a vacation without leaving work behind, or if you want to stay plugged in during your trip, this gadget earns respect. Unlike Paris Hilton.

Related, on Suite 101:

Blackberry 8800 Product Review

High Tech Travel Gifts

High Tech (I Married a Gearhead) Blog

Blackberry Pearl Cingular Blog

T-mobile Blackberry Hand Massage

Luxury Travel

Copyright Jennifer Miner and Suite 101. All rights reserved.

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