The BlackBerry Pearl 8120

How does it look?

The Blackberry Pearl is the most stylish Blackberry to date. Previous models have been very wham-bam-thank you Ma’am. The Pearl is a mix up of glossy dark blue and sleek silver chrome. They’ve replaced the scroll-wheel with a more aesthetically pleasing and easier to use trackball.

You’re looking at a pretty large 240 x 260-pixel colour screen. RIM has cut the size of the Blackberry (107mm tall, 50mm wide, 14mm thick and just 91g) but the screen is still a decent size. This is a relief as the Blackberry is a business phone, which people use to access their email accounts. RIM can afford to cut the overall size of the phone but the need for a larger screen does lead to certain restrictions.

The MicroSD card slot is no longer located behind the battery. This is, again, a relief. Accessing the card before was a lot of hassle as it involved turning off the phone and taking out the battery. The original pearl was thick enough to have the slot on the side so it was confusing as to why they wouldn’t chuck it somewhere more accessible. But, thank the gods, they finally have.

As far the keypad goes, it’s SureType all the way. It’s as close as you can get to a QWERTY keyboard on a smart phone this size but it’s not ideal, as bigger fingers tend to have problems with the small keys.

What does it do?

The 2 megapixel camera is an improvement on the original Pearl’s 1.3. It can also shoot video now, another improvement on the original. The location of the lens hasn’t changed.

Aside from that the only other notable update sare Wi-Fi (which we’ve heard kinda kills the battery) and the more strategically placed SD card slot.

You’ve got all the old tricks that you had with the older version. 64MB internal memory and microSD card, Wi-Fi, HTML Browser, SMS, MMS, E-Mail, instant messaging, Bluetooth 2.0, USB, media player (music and video) organiser, to-do list and Microsoft document viewer.

Who’s it for?

Anyone who needs access to his or her email at all times. Businessmen and adulterers.