BlackBerry Pearl 8100

BlackBerry handhelds have always been targeted at business professionals who rely heavily on email. Features that made the BlackBerrys different from conventional phones were the focus on sending and receiving email, being called 'email phones', and the full QWERTY keyboard with the thumb wheel that has recently lead to a recognized condition at work, called the 'BlackBerry Thumb' for which a 'BlackBerry Balm' has also been developed.

But the BlackBerrys lacked more mainstream features that made it very unpopular amongst non-business consumers, such as a camera and a media player, along with a friendlier-to-use interface. Devices from other manufacturers have had all of these features, along with a workable email solution, so Research In Motion (RIM) has developed the latest BlackBerry 8100, a.k.a the Pearl.

Look and Feel
I must mention that I hated all the BlackBerrys in the past. I hated the fact that they were so expensive (in India, at least), and they didn’t provide the features that phones half that cost did provide. I hated the unergonomic keyboard arrangement, the monophonic ringtones, and the width of the devices. When I saw the Pearl, all of that was whisked away. The Pearl is beautiful.

The Pearl is not as wide as earlier BlackBerrys, making it look a bit more like a conventional mobile phone. It’s quite slim and compact, considering it’s a full featured Smartphone in there. The glossy black body coupled with the chrome trims on the side almost make it lustworthy. It was the first time I used the words "I like" and "BlackBerry" in the same sentence. And all this was before I even turned it on.

The display on the Pearl is a 2.5-inch, 65k color TFT LCD. The resolution is 240x260, which is the one used in the last 7100 series. The 8700s use a larger QVGA display, but 240x260 works for the small device that the Pearl is. The display is pretty bright and readable in sunlight as well. It also comes with a light sensor that adjusts the brightness of the device based on ambient lighting conditions.