BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Review
Research in Motion’s Blackberry has captured the entire business community with its seamless email facilities and sturdy workhorse ruggedness. But there are more reasons why consumers stay away from blackberry. The very thought of blackberry will bring up things like scroll wheels, bulky and chunky hardware, built-in keyboards, some white collared business men and finally mobile email. Some of these characteristics but not all, holds true for Blackberry Pearl series. RIM had decided to aim at something more than the average customer. The very first step being the naming of the device as Pearl, which is itself different from the usual number based names of the past.
Finally a sleek Blackberry:
The design engineers of blackberry have taken a great leap completely leaving behind the ugly blackberry model and have moved to a completely new look. The Pearl 8100 is sleek, with a black and silver theme and weighs just 90grams, being extremely pocket friendly. It has its dimensions to be (H X W X D)mm 107 x 50 x 14.5 mm. The overall size of the phone makes it almost on par with the candy bar hand sets. The above description does not at all sound like the one of a blackberry or even a smartphone, this itself is a great leap in the market of smartphones. The Pearl gets a great plus in terms of design as it gives you more of a phone like feel that you do not usually get with the other blackberry smartphones. The only other blackberry that has got a candy bar form factor is Blackberry 7100G, which is bulky.
Why “Pearl”?
Now let us come to the main factor on why the series has been named as “Pearl”. The trademark scroll wheel of Blackberry has gone and it is replaced by a miniature white trackball placed on the navigational area. This track ball looks like a pearl and hence, the phone is named after it. This trackball can be rotated, moved and pressed in order to make selections. Though it might consume a little time for you to get used to it, it is far better than the previous scroll wheel system and in fact quite a clever one.
Buttons and controls:
Towards the left and right side of the track ball are the back and menu buttons, that allows you to move around well. These buttons are very vital for the sake of navigation as the Blackberry Pearl 8100 does not have a touch screen. The display has a resolution of a mere 240 x 260 pixels. But the good thing is that a light sensor has been included which means you will not be having any issues in reading even in outdoors. Blackberry has offered three home screen themes which can be previewed before applying. This is a good touch to the smartphone.
The left and the right edges of the phone have a convenience key each which can be customised according to your wish. But by default, the key on the right takes you to the camera application and the one on the left is used for voice dialing application. The right side of the pearl also has a volume rocker that works only either when the music application is going on or a voice call is proceeding. The top edge of the phone has a mute button which acts as a pause button during music playback, otherwise puts the phone on standby mode. The left edge has a mini USB power connector and unfortunately a ‘non-standard’ headset jack.
QWERTY keyboard:
You can never imagine a blackberry without a keyboard. Pearl 8100 Smartphone has a small 50mm keyboard. The individual keys are wide and the suretype predictive system is used for entry of text and this means that most of the keys have two Qwerty alphabets and a these buttons are surrounded and picked up with a silver surround and hence easy to catch-up with.
Features:
Coming to the part of features, the RIM Blackberry pearl 8100 has a lot of first times. The set of new features include memory expansion, MP3 player and a camera. Though these features have been there in the smart phones for a long time now, the inclusion of these in blackberry is a great move towards the right direction. The pearl 8100 is a quad band phone with support for GPRS and EDGE.
Memory expansion, Beneath the battery:
The fact that the memory has been expanded is most welcome but the place where the slot has been placed is not that appreciated. The microSD slot is placed right below the battery slot which means you will not be able to add a card unless you switch it off. But in the better side, it switches on automatically once the battery is placed back into it.
Good music player:
The music player offered is reasonably good. Options are available to play tracks from a memory card. You will be able to set any tone as your ring tone quite easily. You can continue to have a music playback as you do some of your other tasks such as making notes diary etc. In case a call comes, the music play back pauses and resumes once the call ends.
Low resolution camera:
Though we are pleased with the fact that a camera has been finally included in the Blackberry Pearl 8100 Mobile Phone and that flash and self portrait mirror are great. The camera resolution is just 1.3 mega pixels which is very average and the fact that there is no video recording facility is also agonising. Though there are not any filters provided like the sepia or greyscale, a few white balance settings like sunny, cloudy, night, and indoor are available. There is an automatic settings on offer for this.
Browsing:
RIM Blackberry Pearl 8100 Smartphone comes with an Internet browser which is an HTML browser that allows the user to view the Web pages in HTML format. You can browse the Internet in the same way as you would do from their office or home computer. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 comes with an embedded RIM wireless modem. The phone comes with quad band network connectivity which allows the user to use their mobile phone in many countries including Europe, North America & Asia. The user can store their data on the phones 64MB of internal Flash memory or expand the phones memory by adding a MicroSD memory card.
Communication:
A PC software is provided along with the package that can be used to synchronise dairy and tasks with your pearl 8100. Emails can be sent either using your company’s network in case it has support for blackberry or by using the internet email service that is offered by your network operator. The absence of WiFi will not be felt much as Bluetooth is always available.
Typing:
The predictive suretype system that we had mentioned earlier is made use of by the Blackberry pearl 8100. . Two letters share a single key and, as you type, software in the Pearl has a guess at the word you want and when you spot it among those suggested you can use the trackball to pick it out. But the whole process of predicting and then selecting is very slow and so it is better to type the words on your own. Since the size of the keyboard is also small, you might have to use your finger tips which might prove to be a little painful after a while and could easily annoy frequent texters.
Call quality:
The call quality of RIM Blackberry Pearl 8100 is very good as is loud and clear both via handset and speaker.
Battery life:
The battery life of is quite good as it gives about 10 hours of continuous music playback. This value has been made possible as the display turns off itself on two continuous minutes of non-usage.
Warranty:
RIM offers Blackberry Pearl 8100 one year limited warranty.
Verdict:
Blackberry Pearl 8100 is RIM’s most consumer focused model that shows that the company is keen to take on operations like Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The new design and multimedia features are most welcome. If you are a corporate who is fun loving too (a rare combo), then blackberry Pearl 8100 will satisfy most of your needs.
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Technical Specification Details of RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Smartphone
| Model name | RIM Blackberry Pearl 8100 |
| Display | 38×40mm 65k colour screen of resolution 240×260 pixels |
| Form factor | Candy bar |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | 50 x 106 x 15 mm |
| Weight | 89 g |
| Available colours | Black, White |
| Phone features | Polymorphic ringtones Vibrating alert Calendar Alarm clock Speaker phone Voice dialing Voice recording |
| Music player features | MP3 Ringtones MIDI Ringtones Polyphonic Ringtones (32 Voice) Vibrating Alert Handsfree Speaker Voice Dialling |
| Audio formats supported | MP3, MIDI, AMR NB, AAC, AAC+ & eAAC+ |
| Messaging and data services | SMS (Text Messaging) MMS (Multimedia Messaging) Instant Messaging Predictive Text Input |
| Memory | On-board memory: 64MB Expandable memory card slot: SD Memory card |
| Connectivity | WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, GPRS, EDGE |
| Network | Quad-band technology |
| Internet | HTML RIM wireless modem |
| Other applications included | Phone Book Calendar Alarm Clock Memo Pad Task List Organiser QWERTY Keyboard Document Viewer (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF) SureType® Keyboard Software BlackBerry Map Security Password Protection |
| Battery type | Lithium ion battery |
| Battery life | Stand-by time: 360 hours Talk time: 3.5hours |
| Warranty | One year |
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