Updated 26 May, 2012, 4:18 pm IST

BlackBerry Pearl 8100

13 Nov, 2006, 5:59 pm IST | by Aalaap Ghag | Smartphones

Camera and Multimedia
The first BlackBerry to include a camera, the Pearl packs in a 1.3 megapixel shooter with a flash as well. While the flash is relatively powerful, sometimes it's a little too powerful. The sensor quality itself is below average. When still, the pictures taken are acceptable, but a slight jerk during the click can cause the taken picture to come out warped. It’s like looking at a reflection of something or someone in flowing, liquid mercury. Colors also seem quite washed out and edges are very blurry.

The Pearl zooms in and out (digitally) during camera preview, and also clicks the picture, but its high sensitivity can cause you to zoom in accidentally when you want to click. This can cause you to miss a moment because the device requires you to be very careful when clicking a picture. It does offer a convenient crop feature right after you take the picture to instantly remove unnecessary elements from it.

There is no video recording capability in the Pearl, which is disappointing since the device has almost everything else. The Pearl can, however, play back videos in 3GP, AVI and even MOV formats provided the video is MPEG-4 / H.263.

The music player on the Pearl is capable of MP3 and AAC playback with ID3 tags support. There seems to be no support for creating playlists. The loudspeaker on the Pearl sounds good and loud, but the headset is best used at low to moderate volumes. Cheap-sounding monophonic ringtones have been done away with—now you can use MP3s as ringtones!

The Pearl doesn’t include an FM radio, which isn’t a necessity in a business device, but the Pearl is a consumer targeted BlackBerry, so it’s worth a mention.

The Pearl has around 64MB of phone memory and also provides a MicroSD/TransFlash memory card slot for expansion. The card slot isn’t hot-swap, however, requiring you to remove the battery in order to add, change or remove the card.

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Tags: RIM , BlackBerry , Pearl , Smartphones , Mobile Phones

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