BlackBerry Pearl 8100

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel
Durability & Robustness
Battery standby time
Value for money
Range of features

Advantages:	instant emails, easy to use, slim
Disadvantages:	camera, quality of the music played back

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

As I'm going for Business advisor at work, thought I would make myself more familiar with the Blackberry family. I asked my boss if I would borrow the demo phone The Blackberry Pearl or 8100 for awhile so I could learn and mess around with it to figure out the settings and so on. To be honest, I've never liked Blackberry phones but have I changed my mind? Let's see.

First of all, what are Blackberry's? Some people call them mobiles that can send emails, others call them PDAs, other just think they are a fancy mobile with a qwerty keypad. Blackberry's website states "A wireless email solution for mobile professionals."
So why would some choose a Blackberry when they are so many phones on the market that do emails now and to some point, I agree but most phones have what we call pull email and the Blackberry uses push email. I hear you cry, what is pull and push email? For people that don't know and believe me I didn't until I worked in the mobile industry is that push email lets you know when you have a new email, whereas pull email you have to check yourself to see if you have a new email. The way I remember it is, you have to pull your own emails on an ordinary phone. I imagine a little envelop on the end of a cord. On Blackberry it gives you push (vibrate/message tone) to let you know. I imagine a little envelop being pushed through a letterbox.
This is why a lot of businessmen loves this phone as it literally emails on the move where ever you can get a mobile signal, you will get emails.

Getting started

So you have your Blackberry switched on and ready to go but you're not completely ready until you synchronise it with your PC. Install the Blackberry software on your PC, then by using the USB cable, there's are various options to copy all your email addresses, telephones numbers etc onto your Blackberry and also get you link into your email address. It took me about 30 minutes to set up the Pearl. So now it's time to play.

Main Screen

There are 5 different links on the screen. Short cuts to different areas of the mobile.

Voice Mail: Just automatically calls Voice Mail for you. When you first use it, it asks for your voice mail number. Mine on Vodafone is 121.

Call Log: This is where you can see all your calls that have been made, received or missed

Email: This is where you can access your email quickly and it only tells you at the side of the word email if you have any new emails.

Text/Media Messages: This is where you can access your text or picture messages quickly and it only tells you at the side of the words 'Text/Media Messages' if you have any new texts or picture messages.

Calendar: This is where you can view all your appointments and meetings and it will warn you with an alert if it's nearly time to go to meetings etc. Will come back to the calendar later.

Keyboard

Unlike other Blackberry's, this doesn't have a full qwerty keyboard where each letter has a individual key but this made more like a mobile but in qwerty. So on a normal mobile 2= abc, on the Pearl 2 has ty.

There are 2 ways of using the keys. SureType is a bit like predictive type but if it doesn't recognise a word, it lets you build the word on the screen. The other way is multi-tap is just the same as non-predictive on other mobiles. Just tap until you get the letter you want but it is slightly easier on the Pearl as it only has two letters compared to three on ordinary mobile.
The pearl does have more buttons that a normal mobile. It has 8 extra keys down the sides to do symbols, capitals, enter and delete key.

It's quite hard to get used to because I'm so used to have abc instead of qwerty on my mobile but I can understand why they have done it like this. This is the first device to combine the quirkyness of a mobile with the logic of a PC and voila this keyboard on the Pearl.

The keyboard makes this the smallest Blackberry yet as Blackberry in the past have been bulky due to the full qwerty keyboard. I also feel that Blackberry wants to appeal the younger market that uses emails for personal use to get a bigger share of the market. Hence the more mobile like slim Pearl instead of a bulky PDA. I think they have done a good job. It looks trend but smart so it will still appeal to their loyal customers the business users but also appeal that younger market.

Trackball/ the Pearl

Well, Sony Ericsson has the joystick and Blackberry has the trackball. It's a translucent ball that lights up in the dark that you can scroll through the menu. That's why the phone is called a Blackberry Pearl because of the trackball. Also instead of it being at the side of the device like on other Blackberry's, I called it a scrolley thing (it's actually called a scroll wheel) is now in the middle of the phone and work like a joystick but just with a ball. It's very easy to use and just right. Not too fast and not too slow.

Main Menu

A bit like the Nokia, the menu button is a separate button. The symbol on the button looks a bit like a blackberry. In the menu, you will recognise many symbols if you are used to using newer mobiles. All the normal things that you would find are there. For example contacts, text messages, settings, bluetooth, profiles, camera etc but there are a few that are new or not normally in a main menu on most phones. Email inbox, compose email, saved email.

Email

Once everything is set-up, emails will just come in when they like. Everything will go into the inbox. Inbox has good capacity for emails. At the moment, there are about 900 emails in mine but I know you can get loads more in.

Each email entry shows the date, time that you received it, email address or the name of the person if in the address book and subject. This makes it very easy to scan for spam and get rid of it.
You can set it up so if a certain people emails you it will sound a different email tone. You can change this in the set up wizard but I haven't gone into that as my emails are mainly junk or boring.

Sending an email is easy too. Just go to the special designed icon. Type away your email and send. You also delete emails and you have the choice whether you just delete them off the handset or delete them off the handset and your actual email account.

Phonebook

You can fill in loads about the people you know. Mobile, home number, work address, home address, webpages, notes. You can add a picture too. FBI-R-US lol On the other hand if you lost your phone or it got stolen, the person would be able to find out everything about the people in your address book.

Calling

Another thing it was especially designed. Calls. Calling on this phone is really simple either just type in a number and press the green button or just find it in the address book, press the green button and there you go. The quality of the call was good. You could hear the person speaking clearly. Part of the call quality can depend on signal strength or the network itself. The loudspeaker is quite good as well. It's loud and clear.

Calendar and Alarm

The calendar is brilliant on this phone. You can set it to daily view, weekly or montly. This gives you an overview on your shedule, not that mine is very busy. You can choose different reminder times, you view the previous week, the following week, the next day. I'd never be lost if I can all my things to do planned in this.

The alarm is also easy to setup but slightly disappointed with it as my D900I has more alarms and settings like what day you want to be woke up on. For example, I hardly work Sundays but in the blackberry I would have to program it to be active on weekends as I do work Saturdays so I would have to remember to turn it off but with D900I I only have to program it to wake me up on the Saturday and it will be still be set for the next Saturday if I so choose so.

Browser

The internet is available but it's quite slow, a bit similar to my D900I but very slow compared to my old W880i. Though it does load the pages nicely but the older Blackberry's and new Curve 8310 have the bigger screens so you can view it better.

Battery life

A really important thing for me. Because I'm sad and I don't get many emails, the battery life lasts for absolutely ages about 5 days but with a realistic use, it would say it would last 3 days maximum depending on what you're doing with it. You can charge it through the PC using the USB cable or the charger. In my box, I've got the English plug and the American one. I wouldn't have minded a European one as I'm more likely to go there than the US.

Camera

It's a 1.3 megapixel and is the first Blackberry with a camera. The picture quality is nothing to write home about it but it's not bad. Compared to other phones that takes pictures, it definitely won't be winning awards but it's just an extra feature, not the one of the main features and for the first attempt, it's a good one.

Other things on the phone

The Pearl takes a micro SD memory card. It can take upto 4GB memory card but the software on the phone has to be after May 2007, otherwise back up your phone and update the software but I don't feel a phone like this needs 4GB of memory anyway.

Media player is where you can view all your pictures, listen to music and ringtones and watch videos. I wouldn't say the sound quality is of the best if you like your musical ringtones and this is where I think the Pearl wouldn't win over the younger market that they are aim at.

Overall opinion

It's a lovely phone. I can't believe that the looming name of Blackberry has put me off these phones for so long. People think Blackberry are hard to use. Well, they aren't. They might be slightly more tricky to set-up but once it is, it makes your life so much easier. Only things that I would change is the camera and the sound quality when playing music if they really want to start winning with the younger market. Other than that, it's a brilliant phone and I can't fault it. I'm not saying that I would switch to a Blackberry as I wouldn't use half the main functions on it but I will be recommending them from now on.

You can get the Blackberry 8100 in different colours (black, pink, red to name a few) on a contract for free now as it has been discontinued and two new Blackberry's have been brought on the scene. Blackberry 8310 Curve which has a bigger screen and gone back to the bigger keyboard and the Blackberry 8110, which is the direct upgrade from this phone and similar to use. Both of these Blackberry's have Sat Nav on it so I will be testing them soon.

For more information, just visit the Blackberry website where you will find the user guide and all the software that is on the CD. http://www.blackberry.com/