BlackBerry Pearl 8120 : Enough to Appeal to More Than Just Business Users

The BlackBerry Pearl has gone a long way towards positioning the formerly business-centric handsets closer to consumers. Though the handset requires a monthly subscription to the BlackBerry back end support, the more phone-like form factor and new multimedia capabilities appeal to consumers. The latest update, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120, upgrades the camera to 2 megapixels, and also adds WiFi with support for T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home UMA service.

This slimmed down the BlackBerry's traditional bulky shape to a ‘candybar' design, immediately making using a BlackBerry more appealing for people with jeans rather than just jacket pockets. A few months later RIM improved the formula further, releasing the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 and 8120, which we're reviewing here. These two handsets were identical except that the former has GPS but no Wi-Fi, and the latter has Wi-Fi but no GPS. Of course if you need hardware GPS on your device then already the 8120 isn't the handset for you. Bear in mind though that you do get Google Maps preinstalled, which supports the ‘My Location' feature, which will pinpoint you between 500 and 5,000 metres using network triangulation - and normally it's at the lower end of that.

The candybar shaped phone measures 107x50x14mm and weighs in at only 90g, making it perfectly pocketable it's a BlackBerry that you won't mind taking out with you in an evening.

The design is appealing, with a fetching indigo finish, and silver strips running down the side and surrounding the central scroll wheel mechanism. Down the left hand side you'll find a full size 3.5mm headphone socket, which makes it possible to use your favourite headphones. You'll also find a cover for the external SD card slot (enabling you to add and remove memory without having to take the battery out). It also means you can up to 8GB of memory to the 64Mb on board - good for a fair few tunes and videos.

Beneath this you'll find a button to activate the Voice Dialling facility - this can be useful for certain business users, but we found we kept hitting it accidently - activating an irritating American accented woman asking us to ‘say a command' at least you can set the key up to act as a shortcut for whatever you prefer.

Down the right side you'll find volume up and beneath, a button that gives you direct access to the camera - we can't really complain about it only having two megapixels or resolution that doesn't seem to have done the iPhone any harm but quality is merely average. The camera has a portrait mirror and a Flash anyway, so it's already outdoing Apple and that before we mention the ability to record 240x180 resolution video.

The display on the 8120 is 320x240 pixels, which does feel a little limited by the standard of many recent smartphones, but it's not too bad. The display colours are not that vibrant though, and the icons not as sharp as the very best of what you can get these days.

At the top of the main screen, you'll find a fairly busy section at the top, displaying info such as the time, date, network, signal strength, sound indicator and how many unread emails you have. A number of icons run down the left hand side screen, providing easy access to the browser, email inboxes, and BlackBerry Maps application. Beneath this is the menu button that provides access to the rest of the options and applications. Moving round these icons is easy thanks to the central roller ball.

Google Maps will prompt you to upgrade to the latest Google Latitude enabled version on first launch and a custom BlackBerry Facebook app is also preinstalled. You'll also find useful apps such as a Voice recorder, Calendar and calculator and a memopad. All pretty standard as well as some cute games such as Sodoku and BrickBreaker.

A potential issue on the 8120 though is the keyboard. Being a BlackBerry, it offers a full Qwerty layout, but RIM has squeezed this into a small form factor by having multiple letters per key. One can use SureType - which is the BlackBerry's version of T9 text entry, but based on the Qwerty layout. It did take a while to get used to having a Qwerty rather than alphabetised layout and this slowed at first but it is something you'd get use to. We found connecting to the Wi-Fi network straightforward enough and it worked first time. As you'd expect, email was simple to set up, and just by entering our Gmail details it pulled down our emails without having to add any techy details.

Browsing the internet via the browser was fine, but not quite up to serious smartphones, Resolution or touch screen ability, which makes it feel rather dated coming from an iPhone. When not on Wi-Fi it also lacks speed as the Pearl is limited to EDGE support, making browsing slightly sluggish compared to 3G handsets.

Battery life is very good however. With light use checking emails, some browsing and a couple of calls it lasted for four days, before running low. Even with heavier use, you should still only have to plug in every two days.

Overall then, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 is a very pleasant to use phone. It can't compete with serious smartphone for web browsing but it can have a good go at that and general multimedia (all while being a serious email tool). Ultimately, if you're on a contract there are better options out there, not least the BlackBerry Bold 9000, but if a cheap to run Pay as you go BlackBerry appeals, then the 8120 will serve you well. The RIM BlackBerry Pearl has proven that the company can indeed produce devices that appeal to consumers. The Pearl is the most phone-like BlackBerry device that we've seen thus far, with the look and feel of a regular mobile handset. While the user interface could use some improvements in the eye candy department, It offers plenty of benefits, specifically to users for whom the Pearl is their first smartphone.


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