BlackBerry Pearl 8120

Gone are the days when businessmen had no option but to carry a bulky, no-media-support business phone that screamed out, 'all work and no play'. Things have changed since the arrival of the BlackBerry 8120 – nicknamed 'Pearl' – and the handset has many hooked today.

Form Factor
The main reason why it may catch your eye could be because it's the first BlackBerry to be slim and stylish. RIM has done a brilliant job by shrinking the size of the BlackBerry. It is comfortable to hold, thanks to its slim candybar profile. The dimensions are 107 x 50 x 14mm, and it weighs just 91g.

The Pearl has a host of ports on the upper left edge of the device. There's a 3.5mm headset jack, and right below is the USB slot which also serves as the charging slot. Below that is the microSD card slot through which you can expand the 64MB of internal flash memory. On the right you'll see volume increase/decrease buttons and a camera shortcut key. A small trackball right below the screen is the main key for navigation within and between applications.

The Pearl has a display of 65,000 colours at a resolution of 240 x 260 pixels. But such a small screen could give you eyestrain while viewing PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

Due to the 50mm width there isn't enough space for a QWERTY keypad, and RIM has shied away from a standard phone-like keypad too. The Pearl has a system where two QWERTY letters share a single key. Sounds really bad for typing? Even I thought so. But that's where SureType comes in action and saves our fingers. I will discuss this a little later.