Blackberry Pearl 8110 review

The RIM Blackberry Pearl 8110 brings the traditionally elegant Blackberry email experience to a candybar-sized smartphone

The BlackBerry is not just for suited and briefcased business bods. Oh no. That might be where the BlackBerry made its first home, but maker Research In Motion (RIM) wants to widen its reach, and with that in mind has launched the neat and tidy Blackberry Pearl range of devices.

The Blackberry Pearl is a candybar smartphone that currently comes in three flavours. RIM seems to like bringing out a device in several slightly tweaked versions with different specifications. It can get a bit confusing, so let’s clarify the Pearl situation right here and now.

As we said, there are three versions. The 8100, 8110 and 8120. Their specifications are pretty similar.

Some of the key differences are that the 8100 has no GPS or Wi-Fi while the 8110 has GPS but no Wi Fi and the 8120 adds in Wi-Fi but not GPS. Got that?

Our review sample was the 8110 variation, and it came from Vodafone where you can get it from free up to £102 depending on the contract you opt for. The contract price includes a year’s free use of Vodafone’s satnav software. This is an off-board system, which means it downloads information over the network when you want to use it. Blackberry Pearl 8110 contract

The good news as far as that is concerned is that information ought to be up-to-date and accurate. With on-board satnav systems where all the data is stored on the device, periodic updates take care of things like the opening of new roads, shifting locations of safety cameras and alterations to Points of Interest. Off-board systems like Vodafone’s can have their centralised info updated on a rolling basis, so when you download it you are, in theory at least, getting the most accurate info available.

The downside is precisely that you have to download the info to your mobile. If you find yourself somewhere without a mobile phone signal and want to plan a route, well, then the service is about as useful as the proverbial chocolate teapot.

Blackberry Pearl 8110 business contract
The key thing about a BlackBerry is that it can pick up your POP email from up to 10 different accounts automatically. It can work with corporate networks too, of course, but private individuals can choose the BlackBerry Internet Solution which lets you set up the service via a Web site. There is an extra monthly fee on top of your contract price for this.

During testing we found the email system worked very well. Email whangs into your inbox automatically. There are separate inboxes for each account which you can set up with different alert tones. A collective inbox for everything is also on hand if you don’t differentiate between email addresses that much.

The Blackberry Pearl line of smartphones is small and tidy – they look like neat candy bar mobile phones and the 8110 is just 107mm tall, 50mm wide and 14.5mm thick. It weighs 88g.

This size makes the Pearl 8110 great for the pocket, but 50mm of width is not a lot of space for a qwerty keyboard. So in most cases two qwerty characters share one key. A system called SureType means you tap a key once for each letter you want regardless of whether it is first or second on the key. A dictionary takes a look at what you are typing and makes sure the net result is a real world and not gobbledygook. Alternatively you can choose a multi-tap T9-ish system, but after a little practice we found SureType to be intuitive.

There is no touchscreen as there is on some other smartphones, so you need to use the small mini trackball that sits under the screen to get around. This not only looks quite cute, it works really well. You roll it under the thumb and press to select. To its left is a button which calls up a menu that varies depending on what you are doing at the time, and to its right is a back button.

Apart from mobile email the BlackBerry Pearl has some other neat features. As a smartphone you would expect it to have a diary and to do list on board, and indeed it does. It can synchronise these applications with your PC and the software you need comes with it. The PC connection is via a USB cable, and you get this too.

None of the BlackBerry Pearl range manages 3G. Instead the 8110 is Tri-band with GPRS. To be honest, the data operations didn’t seem to suffer for the lack of 3G during testing. It is probably only those who hanker for video calling that will rue its absence.

The Blackberry Pearl will play music and has a 3.5mm headset connector so you can use your favourite earphones. With 64MB of on board memory you can’t store a great many tunes inside the Pearl, but there is a microSD card slot on the left side and so it is easy to add more.

There is a Web browser. The screen isn’t the greatest for viewing Web pages – we measured it at 2.2 inches corner to corner and 33mm wide x 40mm tall. But at least the browser is there if you need it.

There is the obligatory camera too, but it is a bit disappointing. It can shoot stills at resolutions up to 2 megapixels and video at 240 x 180 and 176 x 144. It has a self-portrait mirror and flash. It shoots images at reasonable quality as long as the subject is still, but if they are moving you get a bit of blurring. There is some shutter lag too, which means you have to hold the Pearl quite steady after you’ve pressed the shutter button.

On the hardware side one of the things we really like are the two ‘convenience keys’ on the left and right edges of the smartphone. You can configure these to do the things that suit you most, for example launching the camera application, composing an SMS or set up an alarm.

It is safe to say that on the multimedia front, the Pearl (like BlackBerry devices in general) is a way behind the versatile S60 as implemented in some of Nokia’s leading edge handsets and that RIM will have to work hard to catch up. We can’t for example, imagine a 5 megapixel camera in a RIM device for some time to come.

But on the other hand, the Blackberry Pearl 8110 is a neat and compact candybar phonewith mobile email at its core, a strong range of smartphone features and some consumer-friendly extras.