RIM BlackBerry Pearl Review

For years on end Research in Motion (Limited) Blackberry has been one of the leading companies as far as business-oriented mobile phones are concerned. They have led the way for a number of other allegedly leading companies and manufacturers of phones and software developers, such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Microsoft, insofar as the enterprise development of mobile products is being viewed.

Oriented mostly towards today’s business users, RIM phones rely on high quality voice services and the usage of the device as a means of communication proper: a phone as well as a powerful e-mailing system supported by a keyboard for easier writing from the device itself.

Blackberry Pearl is the first product of this brand that not only ranges over business services, but entertainment ones as well: this is the first Blackberry featuring a built-in camera, the first with a memory card slot and also the first to have a multimedia player. In this way the company is trying to venture into the market group that has as yet remained out of their scope– people with more spare time who, though valuing the phone’s business functions, are not that dependent on them and at the same time will not deny themselves the entertainment options.

Apart from its new functionality, 8100 Pearl has a revolutionary design indeed! It has been abruptly cut in size in comparison with the previous models, retaining the Sure Type keyboard, characteristic of the ‘smaller’ models of the brand. Besides that, it adds a very up-to-date and fashionable appearance by means of the elegant black reflecting look of the surface, similar to that of the Motorola KRZRs, which are a hit among ‘designer’ phones at the moment, the way RAZR was at its time. The eye is caught by the innovative trackball – a small white (gleaming) sphere, after which the phone has been named ‘Pearl’.

RIM Blackberry 8100 Pearl has been conceived as a good-looking and quite small stylish business phone, emphasizing on e-mails and voice conversations, including, however, multimedia options such as a mega-pix camera and a music player. The set consists of:

• Phone;
• Charger;
• Mini USB cable;
• Software CD;
• User Manual.

The small pearl has the ‘candy-bar’ design, standard for the RIM, and a built-in antenna like the other new models. But as already noted, it differs considerably in size – mainly the body thickness has been reduced, reaching 0.6’’ (14.5 mm), which is remarkable for a smartphone, adding up to the definite achievement in the remaining dimensions as well:

	Size in inches	Size in mm.	Weight in oz.	Weight in grams
RIM Pearl	4.2" x 2.0" x 0.6"	107 x 50 x 14.5	3.2	90
RIM 7130c	4.5" x 2.2" x 0.7"	115 x 56 x 18	4.2	120
RIM 8700	4.3" x 2.7" x 0.8"	110 x 69 x 19	4.7	134
HTC Tornado	4.2" x 1.8" x 0.7"	107.5 x 46 x 17.5	3.7	106

Though the phone’s body is made mainly of plastic it does not look cheap – just the opposite: it is very pleasant to touch. The workmanship itself is of high-quality and the black mirror finish of the parts definitely contributes to the high-class appearance. To the disappointment of the users, though, finger-marks are easily left, thus staining the surface, which makes it difficult to maintain the phone’s perfect outlook.




The proportions of the device and its well-balanced weight make it very convenient to hold in each hand. Being ‘light-weighted’, it is also possible to carry it trouble-free in a pocket, where it does not feel rather heavy.

The screen has the same resolution as previous models with Sure Type keyboard – 240 x 260 pixels and capable of reproducing of up to 65000 colors. Its diagonal size is 2 inches, which is comparatively normal for a phone that big and with a keyboard of this kind. It is not very bright, just a trifle more than the touch-screen T-Mobile MDA has, but its colors are saturated and real with just a slightly accentuated tinge of red. The screen brightness is sensor-controlled thus ensuring prolonged battery-life, good visibility at various light conditions, and not irritating the eye with strong light when in dark environment. The adjustment to abrupt change of external light takes 3 - 4 seconds, which is normal. We expect this extra to be available from all phones of the mid to high-end.

What makes the appearance of Blackberry phones different from all the rest is their keyboard: having a small dimensions required the usage of a Sure Type keyboard, which is a hybrid of a normal numeric keypad and a real QWERTY. It is developed by RIM and contains 5 (instead of the normal 3) columns of keys, each of them having more than one character. However, unlike the standard numeric pads, the letters here are ordered as on a QWERTY keyboard.
The buttons are of normal size and you will be able to press all of them unless you have very big fingers. They are very tightly set to each other and this can lead to pressing the key next to the one you really need. The upper part of the buttons is less tall that the lower one, resulting in ‘flooring’ of the rows. Pressing is soft and precise – it is improbable that you press a key in vain. This can also be felt thanks to the good tactile response at pressing.

The service buttons are situated above the text-typing ones: they are very close to the latter and have almost the same shape and size. This seems illogical as they are pressed more often when using the menu and call handling buttons are of basic importance for a phone. In between them (in the center of the front panel) there is the new Trackball, used for phone navigation. It is a small brightly-lit white sphere (a pearl), which can be rolled in all directions. It looks very good and is an interesting idea with regard to navigation, but unfortunately not quite sensible because, apart from the main menu and a few applications, the main navigation directions are up and down. Its sensitivity can be set and you can feel certain weariness after a prolonged usage depending on the way you move it – especially true for numerous short motions of the finger. As this method to control a phone is rarely applied, for some users it will take time until they get used to it, and at first most people try to operate it by pressing as if it were a joystick.

On each side of the phone there is one shortcut button whose function can be set by the user. Two volume-control buttons are situated on the upper right side. Though all lateral buttons feature high relief and are easily felt even during conversation, they are equally hard to press and have no feedback whatsoever. The Mute button is on the upper panel.

Instead of buttons on the upper left side, there are the connectors. Standard ones have been used not only for connecting to other devices and charging, but for music as well: mini USB port and 2.5 mm stereo jack. This feature enables you to connect your Pearl to a computer using any available USB cable designed for different peripheral equipment, to charge it in the same manner, as well as to plug in various headphones or audio adaptors for the 2.5mm jack.
The service LED light is situated above the screen. It flashes in blue during active Bluetooth connection and in red during incoming calls (provided you have set it to do that beforehand) or unread message.

Interface

You can personalize the home-screen of Pearl in numerous ways. Thanks to its inner themes (and additionally downloaded ones) it can acquire an entirely different outlook without following any pre-set pattern. The themes have options to put shortcut-icons there, as well as an active today screen, which supplies information about missed calls/messages and upcoming events from the calendar. You can also put main menu icons directly onto the standby screen. There are definitely a lot of opportunities to personalize but they all depend on the themes.

Depending on the theme, the main menu is also different: we looked at one of the preloaded themes of the phone (coming from T-Mobile USA), called BB Dimension Today.
The main menu consists of a wide grid with numerous animated icons. In case they are ‘small’, the screen can accommodate 4 rows of 5 icons each and provide scrolling for the others. The icons are animated and change their appearance at pointing. They are in color and have a very pleasant look that backs the vision of a modern phone. You can easily change their location at will.

Unfortunately this vision is available SOLELY in the home-screen and the main menu; all sub-menus are text lists, in which one can only move up and down (rendering the trackball useless) and lacking any graphic layout at that. There is simply text with monotonous font and size there. In our view, they look exceptionally unsightly and are also inconvenient, thus spoiling the otherwise good impression made by software. Creating a more youth and multimedia oriented model, they should have been more assiduous and made efforts to substitute this ‘pre-historic’ look of the menus for something to match the modern main menu and appearance of Pearl.

However, the menu navigation is quite fast. One can seldom be irritated by a tangible delay and that is a good achievement for a smartphone. As a whole, working with the device is stable and it rarely ‘crashes’ unlike the Symbian models for example. Since the phone supports multi-tasking, in order to replace the application with another one that is loaded at the moment, you have to press the Menu button while in the main menu and choose the ‘switch application’ option.

Phone book

The phonebook of 8100 Pearl is praiseworthy – it is a serious one and to work with it is convenient, fast and pleasant despite its unsightly interface. At adding a new contact (here referred to as ‘address’) you have lots of spare space for all types of numbers and information at your disposal. Unfortunately the ugly unformatted interface makes the navigation to a certain much used line a bit slow and it is difficult to find exactly what you are looking for - very much like Windows Mobile for Pocket PC OS. You can easily add a personal ring-tone or a call-appearing photo to a contact. The phone enables the user to crop only a part of the photo image kept in the device memory.

One can start looking up in the phonebook by typing a text in the list where all the contacts are visualized. This can also be done by entering the text directly from the standby screen – this will call up the dialing interface simultaneously with contacts matching the typed text.
The phone has at its disposal voice commands via the Voice Signal software. They are speaker-independent and operational without preliminary settings and recording of names. Unfortunately, apart from voice number dialing (and being strongly recommended that these are popular names from English speaking countries since different ones are hardly recognized) and the senseless checking of battery status and coverage, there is no other available voice function. In our view it would be much more convenient if one were able to use commands to enter various applications – alarm, calendar, calculator, instead of looking for them in the long menu.

Organizer

Since most options are scattered directly in the main menu rather than in several groups, you will find the organizer distributed in separate icons of the same menu as well. You can be directed by the images of the icons, which do not lack logic in what they represent.

The calendar can be viewed either by month, week or day. The default mode at opening can be set as well as the day with which to start the week. In order to add a note (‘event’) for a specific day you must simply select it, select an hour (or use the option ‘All day event’) and enter a subject. In case you are using the Active Today Screen theme the upcoming events will be visualized there to pre-remind you of the event.

Apart from events for a certain date, tasks can also be added. These are reminders with no specified date. Simple notes can also be typed – but the indispensable name here is not convenient; the Windows PPC phones save time by automatically taking the beginning of the note text.

The phone can be programmed as an alarm clock as well. It is a ‘day alarm’ and once switched on, it will go off at one and the same time every day. You can also set a snooze but unfortunately it is only one, so it is not possible to use several ones for different hours. There is an option to switch the alarm on or off during the weekends.

There is also a separate icon for the Calculator. It includes the Converter, which is not very convenient to use – you must enter the value and then from/to currency every time you want to convert; it is not possible to enter the type of converting so that to be capable of fast input of various numbers afterwards.

Messaging:

Blackberry phones are well developed as means to exchange messages. All RIM phones have standard or hybrid QWERTY keyboards thus offering the fastest way to type a text. They are popular mainly due to the e-mailing system, which is probably the best mobile e-mail model.

Setting up your personal email is done in just a few steps. If you are using a popular mail server like (Google) Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc, you’ll be able to pass the setup, just entering your username (together with @domain) and password. If the Blackberry can’t recognize the server you’ll be asked to enter the email settings such as IMAP or POP3, incoming and outgoing servers by your own.

In order to deliver you push email with any email system you use, the Blackberry gets the email from your inbox, and transfers it through their mail system and the new message will be pushed to your phone messaging inbox. You receive it just as it is with text messages.

Sending a new message will be indicated as if it was sent by your own email, and when you check its sent box (from a computer for example) it will be saved also there. Deleting an email from the phone will ask you if you want to remove it from the phone memory only, or also from the mailbox.

A very convenient option is the visualization of text messaged as dialogs and by opening one, the rest with the messages from/to the same number are displayed above and below it.

The phone comes with the installed T-Mobile USA version of Instant Messenger, which supports the popular ones AIM, MSN, Yahoo! and ICQ. For us it is a very useful application so as it enables the users to contact people online thru EDGE connections.

Connectivity and Data

Blackberry Pearl is a quad-band GSM phone, which makes possible to use it adequately in the GSM networks of all continents with no coverage problems. It supports EDGE data and thanks to that is capable of comparatively fast e-mailing and Internet connection. However, it does not feature a faster 3G network of the newer generation.
The phone supports the last (2.0) version of Bluetooth for connecting to wireless accessories. You can easily connect to headphones or a car kit – the most often used devices. Information transfer (photos, etc.) is also feasible, but unfortunately it does not support the A2DP profile, making it impossible to listen to a stereo recording via the Bluetooth.

On the left of the phone there is a mini USB port. Being a standard port, it can easily be used for a charger or a cable belonging to other devices. It is also the place to plug the computer cable. Our phone arrived with Blackberry Desktop Manager Version 4.2.0.10 (July 26 2006). This is the standard software with the Blackberry phones, offering a well-developed synchronization.
In our case we set it to synchronize with Outlook because, when using a Windows Mobile phone, our ActiveSync also synchronizes with it. The Blackberry software transferred all our information from the computer into the Pearl very fast and without any errors at that.
The software allows for installing applications on the phone as well as backing up. You can work with multimedia files transferring them (manually) to or from the device. In case you are using a memory card you can view it as a separate (mass storage) device, provided that the computer operating system supports that.
As a whole, the computer software provided with Blackberry Pearl made an excellent impression on us.

Internet

We are rather disappointed from the internet browser of the Blackberry Pearl. It is just too plain. Capable of visualizing full HTML pages, it works in “One Column View” only and adopts the pages to your screen, ruining their original look. Although it is pretty usable, it’s not a pleasure to browse image-rich pages with it. Obviously, RIM did not adapt the browser to the Pearls’ trackball which would have allowed not only vertical, but horizontal scrolling, similar to the one on S60 phones.

Camera
The camera module is situated on the back panel of the phone. It is 1.3 mega pixel one with a small ‘mirror’ and a LED light, which is used as a flash. The launch takes about 5 seconds after selecting it from the menu. The camera’s interface is comparatively simplified, showing only the number of pictures that can be stored in the available memory, the zoom adjustment (it is a five-fold digital zoom whose usage does not make any sense) and the pre-setting of the flashlight. The ‘options’ menu allows for adjustment of the white balance. Here you can also find three possible resolutions (1.3, 0.3 and 0.07 mega pixels), three compression options as well as a choice of location to save and names of the pictures.
After taking a picture you have the opportunity to either save, delete, set as a caller ID/homescreen or send it. Saving a photo and getting ready for the next one takes about 6-7 seconds.

Pictures, taken with the phone, are of quite poor quality – partly because of the low camera resolution – 1.3 mega pixels (the nowadays up-to-date cameras on the mobile phone market feature 3 or more mega pixels). Apart from the low resolution the photos’ colors are very unreal and non-saturated with a grayish tinge – the dynamic is rather low and pictures look very ‘flat’. In addition all details are simply blurred and turn into one entity.

Indoor performance (with artificial light) is actually worse, with ‘noise’ at even strong illumination in the room, let alone at poor one. The quality then goes totally down, making the photo objects almost unrecognizable.

Audio

As the first multimedia-enabled model of the brand, Blackberry Pearl is quite modest in displaying its novelties to the users. Though on the main menu one can find numerous icons for all kinds of applications, all ‘Media’ has been put together in one menu. It is from here that one can pick music, video, tones and pictures.
The music player is good-looking but lacks functions: during playback it visualizes information about the current file and a picture, if one has been entered into it. The only accessible options from here are pause/play and stop. Volume is controlled by buttons on the right side. At the beginning, we thought there was no rewind option, but later we found out that one must go up to reach ‘timeline’, then click on it and turn the trackball left/right.
RIM have left room for future development – there is no kind of equalizer or visualization whatsoever. There are no options to arrange and make play lists and even previous/next songs are only accessible thru a menu (once again a text one), which makes this operation rather inconvenient.
The formats, available to play, are the standard MP3 and a few variants of AAC.

Video

The video player uses the same graphic interface and respectively – has the same options; the difference is that the screen space is utilized entirely by the file. Unfortunately there is no opportunity for full screen preview.
Bearing in mind the restricted functionality of both players, we reckon it more appropriate to combine them into one – like Windows Media Player for laptop computers and their pocket-size kin – Pocket PC phones and Smartphones.

Software

Blackberry Pearl has 64 MB built-in memory and is the first model of the manufacturer to have a memory extension slot. It is designed for micro SD cards but, unfortunately, is situated under the battery. In order to replace the card one needs to switch off the phone and remove battery – no doubt a tedious and inconvenient operation.
8100 utilizes the standard operating system so all the applications for previous models (7100 series) will be compatible. There are various applications and lots of games in store for this phone. The one game which came pre-loaded with Pearl was Brick Breaker.

Performance

8100 works quite steadily and trouble-free in view of the fact that it is a smartphone. Even with a lot of loaded applications one can hardly notice any delay in its almost instantaneous operation. About the only problem we encountered was unlocking the keyboard – it is done by a key sequence (despite that locking can ONLY be executed via an ‘icon’ in the main menu). Almost every time we had to press the respective buttons more than once. During our trial (about a week) there were several odd error messages requiring an inevitable restart.

Blackberry Pearl has an excellent performance as a phone in all possible conditions. At our regular test for signal strength it nearly achieved the results of the best brands, passing by several degrees the smartphones of the leading phone make – Nokia N73 and N80, and placing itself far ahead of Motorola KRZR.

We were pleased by the sound in both directions during conversation - it is strong and clear without any interfering noise. Voices sounded as real but the incoming sound, though distinct enough, altered voices so that they became sharper and stiffer.
The speakerphone is very well implemented. When using it one can stay as far as 3 feet away without any deterioration of the sound audibility. At 6 feet, the other side can hear you more weakly but still clearly and intelligibly. In order to enable its user to hear at the same distance, the phone is equipped with a comparatively big loudspeaker located on the upper part of the back panel. Unfortunately its sound turns rather sharp at high volume, which can at times nearly make it unintelligible.

Conclusion

We can certify that Blackberry Pearl 8100 is indeed revolutionary for its make – it has acquired a camera, a memory slot and a multimedia player. But what is equally revolutionary about it is the design – it is very small and thin for a smartphone, especially for one with a non-standard keyboard. Its dimensions make it convenient to both carry and use and there is the terrific appearance of the black mirror surface to it. After adding the fast and comparatively stable menu, the good performance as a phone with strong sound and good reception, we can only complain about the unsightly and sometimes hard to use menu, the non-perfect implementation of the camera and music player. We are convinced they will be improved in the models to follow.

	Carrier	Price Today	Price after rebate
		$0.00	$0.00
		$49.99	$0.00