The BlackBerry Pearl 3G is a curious addition to RIM’s popular slim smartphone line: it’s got the design looks and feel of the new Bolds and Curves, but it’s only packing an old school 0-9 keyboard. Is it a step backwards, or an essential change to welcome dumbphone upgraders into the fold? Read on and we’ll tell all in our full BlackBerry Pearl 3G review.
BlackBerry Pearl 3G: Everything you need to know. Click here!
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Pearl 3G review:
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Typing tested
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Build and media skills
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: What’s new
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: The ultimate Messenger phone?
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Live Q&A!
Making mini versions of smartphones seems to be all the rage these days, and though you might not expect it, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G joins this trend. It’s a slimmed down version of the BlackBerry Bold 9700, rather than a mere Pearl 8100 upgrade, with the former’s silver trim, moulded black plastic and excellent optical trackpad in place of the lint-luring trackball of old. It’s svelte and slim, with a respectable 3.2 megapixel camera with flash around the back, delightfully poppy buttons, and a solid back panel that won’t slide off when you pull it from your pocket. The 2.25-inch screen is also incredibly sharp for its size at 360×400, with great viewing angles.
What might come as s surprise though is that the BlackBerry Pearl 3G’s performance also matches the Bold 9700. It uses the same processor, has 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS, and is blindingly fast for its size as a result: we’d go so far as to say that it zips around BlackBerry OS 5.0 quicker than last year’s Bold. Our longstanding issues with the BlackBerry browser and its lack of tabs fade away at this small screen size too, especially since it loads page so snappily.
The battery life is shorter on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G, sure: with a 1150mAHr battery instead of 1500, you’ll only get a day’s use out of it rather than a whole weekend, but that’s just enough. And not every app runs on it yet due to the unusual screen ratio: useful tools like Google Maps and Sync, Facebook and Foursquare all run fine, but Evernote and PayPal, among big name applications, do not. But the shelves of the BlackBerry App World for it are still well stocked, and every plugin we tested worked fine.
As it stands, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G is one of the fastest, most feature filled candybar phones we’ve ever used: we can’t realistically see Nokia matching it with its upcoming Symbian S60 Nokia C5 handset. But there’s one other big change, and it’s likely a dealbreaker: the 0-9 keyboard. Existing Pearl owners will be surprised and possibly annoyed by this, after years of practice getting up to scorching WPM counts with the two-letters to a key layout that’s being made an option in the US, but not Europe.
We go into the BlackBerry Pearl 3G’s messaging skills in much more detail in our typing review, but suffice to say that it can’t quite reach the same speeds. As such, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G is for people upgrading from something like a Nokia 6700 than downgrading from a QWERTY BlackBerry like the Curve 8520, or more recent Nokia E series. Although SureType is smart at learning new words, it’s still a struggle to type out properly formatted full length emails, and as a result you might shy away from doing just that: this is a phone for people who value informal chatting with friends over BlackBerry Messenger over sending crucial memos back to the office.
If you’re thinking powerful performance and an inefficient keyboard make for strange bedfellows, you’re not alone – especially when we know the all singing, all dancing BlackBerry 6 software is coming out in a few short months, and RIM’s not said a peep about the potential for upgrades, which only makes the decision clearer: this isn’t a BlackBerry for current BlackBerry owners. Rather, it’s an excellent introductory model for those who can’t get enough of the skinny candybar form factor above all else. If that’s you, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G will suit you down to the ground.
Read the rest of our BlackBerry Pearl 3G review:
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Typing tested
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Build and media skills
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: What’s new
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: The ultimate Messenger phone?
BlackBerry Pearl 3G review: Live Q&A!
