BlackBerry Pearl-8120 Titanium Review - Design & Features

Perhaps the best thing about Pearl is how it packs all of the functionality of its big brother, the BlackBerry Curve, into a device that’s the size and shape of a standard candybar phone.  Small and slim enough to tuck into a pocket, Pearl doesn’t feel like a smartphone when you hold it or carry it around.  It looks like a regular ol’ cellphone, not some uber-geeky device (or traditional BlackBerry) - at least until you glimpse at all those buttons on the front panel.

Pearl’s front is split between a 2.25” display and a twenty-button keypad topped off by four softkeys and a navigational trackball.  A chrome-accented speaker and multicolor LED indicator light adorn the top edge of the front panel, as well.  RIM tweaked the 8210’s keyboard just a bit, firming up the action while making the buttons flow around the center-mounted trackball a bit more gracefully than they did on the 8100.  The layout’s the same, though, condensing a traditional QWERTY layout onto 20 alphanumeric keys by assigning two letters and a symbol each to most of the buttons. 

This Pearl adds a standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack which, along with a microSD card slot and a USB 2.0 port for high speed data transfer, makes the device a decent replacement for your portable media player.  An upgraded camera features 2MP resolution and a very handy flash that doubles as a light for video recording.  You also get Stereo Bluetooth compatibility and playback support for a plethora of audio and video file formats.

BlackBerry’s push Email system is still at the core of even this, RIM’s most consumer-oriented device, and the Email app is easily configured for use with up to ten email accounts.  I easily set my review device up to access a GMail account, a custom domain account, and a newly created account with a T-Mobile address.  An attachment viewer program deftly handled images and office documents sent via Email.  Pearl also came ready out of the box to connect to AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, and MSN Messenger accounts, which I really appreciated when I was able to carry an IM conversation on from my office to the train in order to finalize after-work plans with some friends one evening.

The new Pearl looks a lot like the old Pearl, and also much like AT&T’s recently launched version of the 8120.  T-Mobile swapped the 8100’s black paint job for a grey finish on the 8210 but kept the same chromed plastic accents that I disliked so much the first time around.  I’m still not keen on them, but maybe I’ve been a bit desensitized to them by the dozens of handsets that have come to market sporting cheap mirrored plastic strips in the past year.

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