Features and Design Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) EDGE/GPS world phone, usable wherever GSM service is available (all of Europe). Also a BlackBerry, with full push/pull enterprise and POP email services, along with Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or ICQ instant messaging. Music player compatible with AAC, AAC+, MP3, MIDI, and WAV files and a video player compatible with most MPEG-4 Part 2 formats such as DivX, AVI and QuickTime, and stereo Bluetooth (Bluetooth 2.0). There's a 1.3 MP digital camera with flash, support for real music ring tones, HTML Web browsing, voice dialing, and the usual array of PIM functions. The T-Mobile version also supports the carrier’s myFaves feature. Aside from these sterile specifications, the petite Pearl (4.2” x 2.0” x 0.6”, a bit wider than Motorola's KRZR) is a pretty polished phone. And at 3.1 ounces, it's surprisingly lightweight. Pearl's 2.2-inch screen is bright, with better blacks and contrast than the BlackBerry 8700c.
Pearl's primary input method is its SureType QWERTY keypad, laid across 20 buttons (usually with two letters), punctuation or action keys (i.e. shift, alt, return, delete, etc.) per key, in a four-by-five key array. While Pearl's individual rectangular keys are approximately the same size as the BlackBerry 8700's square buttons, the Pearl keypad is so packed that accidental adjacent key hits are far more common. Above the keypad are four function keys — send, menu, back, and end — with a "trackball" controller, which is not really a trackball at all (it doesn't move). You simply rub your thumb over it to move the cursor up, down, left, and right. It's quite sensitive. We still missed BlackBerry's familiar spine jog shuttle wheel, with its tactile clicking feedback. Getting music into the phone is a dream, especially using Windows Media Player 11, which immediately recognizes the Pearl and lets you sync as if it were any other WMA music player (a USB data cable is included). Pearl is equipped with a standard 2.5mm headphone jack and comes with a mono wired headset. Any standard 2.5mm wired stereo headset will work fine if Bluetooth is a problem. Like all BlackBerry phones, accessing and programming the varying ring-tone and alert options requires unnecessary digital spelunking. For storage, Pearl includes 64MB of built-in memory and a microSD card slot, regrettably located behind the battery in a fragile metal pop-up slip.
Conclusion
While it looks sleek and fancy, there is no reason for a shrunken BlackBerry if it means shrunken text-input functionality. Still, if you don't plan to compose long responses, but rather seek a little entertainment and have a desire to snap a candid picture to accompany your e-mail without looking like a hip-holster geek then you qualify as a Pearl diver.
Pros
• Sleek looks
• Pocket-sized and lightweight
• 1.3 MP camera
• Digital music player
• Loud and clear conversations
Cons
• Awkward QWERTY keyboard
• Poorly-designed multimedia options and playback
• Poorly positioned microSD slot
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