BlackBerry Pearl is a Head Turner

For any Blackberry user who’s ever been embarrassed about pulling out their fat old clunker and being phone-cameraless to boot, there’s hope. The first looks of the BlackBerry Pearl (to be launched at by T/Mobile on September 18th as the Blackberry Pearl 8100) are quite favorable. The phone is Research in Motion’s (RIM) first BlackBerry camera phone, and the first to have removable storage (it uses an SD micro card) as well as media player. That means business users who’ve come to depend on BlackBerry need not be shut out of the more entertaining parts of cell phone life anymore. It’s a candy bar phone, and but just as small as the popular selling phones like the Motorola Razr or Q.

What’s gone is the old scroll wheel on the side of the phone, the one that left BlackBerry users with those telltale thumb calluses. Replacing it is a center trackball (pearl-colored) that will even glow different colors based on ring tones. Anyone who’s ever used a BlackBerry will tell you that it’s the most dependable way of making sure your email gets to you wherever you are. It pushes email to you using the cellular network, rather than you using an the Internet to actively go and retrieve your email. Corporations love it because their troops of roaming employees can always be in touch.

Traditional BlackBerrys have a fat, wide bodies with a full keypad and users relied on their thumbs (or thumbing) to bang out a message. Hence, those who’ve never used a T/Mobile BlackBerry before will be a bit dumbfounded by the Pearl’s keyboard. The T/Mobile ilk has a keyboard with two letters on each key to save space. You type as if you’re text messaging, and a technology called SureType has algorithms to help select what it thinks is the correct letter. It works reasonably well but takes getting used to. I have the predecessor, the T/Mobile 7100T, and I will tell you that you can never take your eyes off it. Without checking what you’ve typed, you’re bound to be sending some gobbledygook.

As I read the reviews it’s clear that BlackBerry users around the world are jumping for joy. From ZDNet, to the International Tribune the response was a thumbs up. And, at the New York Times,David Pogue gave it as glowing a review as I’ve ever seen him give (even the display is bright enough to be a flashlight, he said). Me, I’m jumping on the phone to T/Mobile. At $199, I think I’ve found the perfect cross between my business life and my media life.