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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Good cell phone, great PDA, Great e-mail, OK net access."
Pros: Full of features. Speaker phone excellent and call quality good. PDA syncs well w/ my PC's Outlook. QWERTY style keypad and Sure Type make e-mail easy. Camera was OK for a 1.3 MP.
Cons: Keypad a bit small, slick. Micro SD under battery. EDGE through T-mobile slow, but that's not the Pearl's fault. Why is the power plug near the ear, instead of on the bottom?
Summary: I received two Blackberry Pearls for free with 2 year agreement with T-Mobile. My father took one and I have the other one. I am having an easier time using the functions, and there are a lot of them. I think he might have bit off more than he can chew, but we'll see if an old dog can learn new tricks...
It is called the Pearl, due to the trackball in the middle of the phone that you use to go through most functions. It is a great help and as good as a mouse for your cell phone.
Call quality has been very good, and the speaker phone is easy to use. You can use your other functions while on the speaker phone without difficulty. Voice dialing also easy to use and does not require you to train the phone to your voice.
Sending and receiving e-mail very easy and was easy to set up. There is a QWERTY style keypad fit, with each key having a pair or more letters and symbols. It takes some getting used to using, but, I have no problem now writing an e-mail for 45 minutes, with only my thumbs getting a bit tired. The Sure Type works so well I'd just assume have it for my word processor. I rarely have to correct the word prediction and don't have to use the trackball all that much to choose between word options.
I had a camera phone with LG before, but it cost money at the time to send pics with text, so I didn't use it much. The Pearl takes decent 1.3 MP pics and all it takes is a press of the Pearl and then you type a message and off it goes like all of your other e-mail. There's a 5x digital zoom, self-portrait mirror and a low-level flash. It handles light levels at dusk OK, but the pictures at night with the flash were not too good. Not all that great at distance, either. It would be nice to have video capability, especially given that you can have a 2 GB micro SD card in it. Pictures easy to transfer either through Blue-tooth, e-mail, or the micro-SD card.
The Internet access through T-Mobile with EDGE is not all that great. It reminds me of having a 56k modem, which after having had DSL is just painful to wait for. The screens come up and most sites are readable. The T-Mobile Hit Zones are more structured for phone e-mail access and aren't so painfully long to wait for.
Toss in the data management functions through the PDA and it makes a very nice tool for business. I was able to complete a writing critique without my laptop computer and also schedule the meetings I needed to schedule easily while at a business conference.
I haven't used the MP3 player capabilities, but the ring tones were fine and there's a handful of settings to have incoming calls at vibrate, separate rings, quiet and loud profiles. Incoming e-mail messages can have their own rings as well.
Given the e-mail capabilities, I haven't used the text-messaging either, but I assume that it would be as easy and quick as the e-mail. It sure beats using a standard cell-phone keypad for generating messages.
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