The BlackBerry® Pearl™ 8100 smartphone is one of the world’s smallest smartphones and packs all of the power you expect from a BlackBerry® smartphone. It comes complete with digital camera, multimedia capabilities and expandable memory. And it offers users everything else you would expect from a BlackBerry smartphone—including phone, email, web browser, text messaging (SMS and MMS), instant messaging, organizer applications and more.The BlackBerry Pearl smartphone is small enough to take anywhere. It’s the ultimate combination of brains and beauty.

The RIM BlackBerry Pearl wasn’t exactly a hidden gem. Specs and images of the Pearl (aka the 8100, aka the Stealth) leaked onto the Web about a month ago, and Research In Motion certainly made no secret that it planned to release devices with integrated multimedia capabilities, though it never named a specific product or release date. However, today RIM along with T-Mobile officially introduced the BlackBerry Pearl to the world, the first BlackBerry to offer a built-in camera, video and music playback, and expandable media. While we certainly welcome these additions, the Pearl isn’t offering anything revolutionary; most smart phones today have the same capabilities and offer more functionality, such as video recording.

The Pearl is a very normal looking bar shaped phone if you overlook the two extra columns on the keypad and the trackball where the d-pad or joystick typically would be. The device is clad in a piano black gloss finish that appears to be pretty scratch resistant. The sides of the Pearl are covered in a dark silver/pewter colored metal finish, that is quite attractive and a bit less prone to fingerprints than the black surfaces.With such a tiny phone though, something always had to give. To the dismay of some business users, Blackberry has reduced its full QWERTY keypad to less than half its size, sharing two letters per key using SureType predictive technology, which allows you to choose letters as you go. This process is a lot slower than simply typing your message, but RIM has aligned the keys in a rigid manner which should help ease the transition to the new key layout.

Email has always been at the core of the Blackberry functionality and with this phone it is no different with support for a large number of Web clients as well as application formats from the likes of ACT!, Novell and Microsoft Outlook. We will not go too much into these, however, as email use is no different to in the past. Security is also very much the same, with SD card security the only addition made.The Pearl does allow for instant messaging, though, with applications from Yahoo, Google and BlackBerry already installed. It also has the standard BlackBerry organisational tools such as the task list and can synchronise easily with the desktop.One of the biggest additions (and bit of a let down we would have to say) would have to be the 1.3-mega pixel camera — we would have preferred 2-megapixels and a lot more functionality. It carries out light balancing very well but its in-built flash seems to struggle under some lighting conditions. We found the 3x digital zoom very responsive, though, and thought images as a whole came out crisp and clear.

Specifications:

Navigation: Trackball, SureType® QWERTY-style keyboard with SureType software (Keyboard), Keyboard backlighting
User Interface: Intuitive icons and menus
Memory: 64 MB flash memory, Expandable memory – support for microSD card
Microprocessor: No
Modem: Embedded RIM® wireless modem

Email Integrations:

• Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft® Exchange
• Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for IBM® Lotus® Domino®
• Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Novell® GroupWise®
• Integrates with an existing enterprise email account
• Integrates with existing personal email account
• Integrates with optional new device account

Device Security:

• Password protection and keyboard lock
• Support for AES or Triple DES encryption when integrated with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server
• FIPS 140-2 Validated (FIPS validation)
• Optional support for S/MIME

Network:

• North America: 850 MHz GSM/GPRS networks
• North America: 1900MHz GSM®/GPRS networks
• Europe/Asia Pacific: 1800MHz GSM/GPRS networks
• Europe/Asia Pacific: 900MHz GSM/GPRS networks
• EDGE networks

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under Pearl series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.