The BlackBerry Pearl is a sleek, stylish phone, with plenty of multimedia features. If I was choosing a smartphone for personal use, I would give the Pearl serious consideration. Business users should be more cautious of the Pearl.
It’s easy to be sucked in by the unit’s small size, slick styling, and vivid LCD, but the cramped keyboard and highly-limited Office viewer will frustrate heavy e-mail and Microsoft Office users. In the following photos, I’ll show you why.
Just below the LCD screen, the Pearl has a new trackball and Menu and Escape buttons. These controls replace the right-side trackwheel and Escape key that many BlackBerry users are accustomed to.
The Pearl’s SureType keyboard features a traditional QWERTY layout, but two letters are assigned to a single key. The keys are small and make text entry very difficult for my thumbs. I found it nearly impossible to simultaneously use two thumbs, as I would with a Palm Treo.
As you begin to enter the letters of a word, SureType provides a list of possible letter combinations or words based on context. The premise sounds good and the technology works for common words, but try to enter a proper name or anything with an apostrophe and SureType falls apart. I found SureType more a hazard than a benefit.
The white box is blocking the full address of the POP3 e-mail account I used to test the phone. I’ll talk more about my e-mail tests later in the gallery.
The BlackBerry Pearl has a 2.25-inch TFT screen that displays 65,000 colors at a resolution of 240×260-pixels. The screen provides a sharp, clear display with bright colors.
Here, I’ve created a contact for myself and add my own photo–taken with the Pear’s camera.
Depress the thin silver latch near the Pearl’s base to remove the battery cover.
BlackBerry rates the Pearl for 3.5 hours of talk time and up to 15 days of standby time.
Removing the Micro SD card is a delicate, but not a difficult, operation.
Our test unit included a SanDisk 1.0GB Micro SD card. You can see just how small the card is against my thumbnail.
I actually dropped the card when removing it from the phone. If lost, the card’s tiny size could make it difficult to find.
Before tossing the Pearl into your purse or pocket, you should lock the keypad or place the unit in standby mode. My unit once called the last-dialed number while the phone was in my pocket. Mark Kaelin, my colleague and fellow editor, was treated to a conversation between me and my daughter will I placed her in the car seat.
I was surprised by how well the Pearl’s voice dialing feature worked. You press the voice dialing shortcut key on the phone’s left side, say “dial”, and then the number. The phone sill normally provide you a choice of numbers if it’s not absolutely sure and you answer “yes” to dial the appropriate number.
Although the voice dialing system works well, it’s not foolproof.
The Pearl supports bluetooth.
The Pearl can use BlackBerry’s own messaging service, BlackBerry Messenger, or four other popular IM services.
The Pearl support up to 10 separate POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail accounts. Businesses who want to integrate the Pearl with Microsoft Exchange will need to use BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
As we don’t use BlackBerry Enterprise Server, I setup a POP3 account to test the system. The setup of simple and straightforward. I received this message shortly after configuring the e-mail account.
As in previous photos, I have blocked out the full address of the POP3 e-mail account I used to test the Pearl.
The Pearl’s calendar supports daily, weekly and monthly views.
The Pearl’s Web browser contains several preloaded favorites. You can also enter a URL.
This is a TechRepublic gallery of Firefox 2.0.
Even the Firefox 2.0 gallery’s small thumbnails were crisp and clear on the Pearl.
Pressing the Menu button from within the Messages application, will let you compose a variety of new messages and perform other message-related task.
A small LED above the LCD screen lights up different colors for different status messages: blue for Bluetooth, green for wireless, red for new messages (seen here), and amber for low battery.
The Home screen also shows a new message notification.
The inbox shows your latest e-mails, sorted by date and time.
To test the Pearl’s e-mail capability, I sent an e-mail containing a Word document to the test POP3 account. The message came through in seconds, but I had forgotten to attach the Word document. Doh!
I should probably let myself know I forgot the Word document. Pressing the Menu button from within and e-mail message, bring up the menu shown here. From this menu, I can reply to the message.
I can now enter text into this blank reply message.
When I begin typing, SureType provides a list of possible letter combinations or words. As before, I found SureType cumbersome and annoying for anything but common words. Here, I’m trying to enter the letter I, but the U and the I are located on the same key. Seems logical that I would press the key twice to enter the second letter, but that’s not how the system works. You press the key once then have to use the trackball to select the correct letter–very annoying.
Finally, my reply is ready to send.
Here, my Inbox shows that I replied to the message.
A new message has arrived. This one has the attached Word document–denoted by the file and paperclip icon. I must have gotten my message.
I’m not sure why the e-mail shows two attachments as it only has one.
Pressing the trackball or the Menu button allows me to open the attachment.
Before actually opening the attachment, the Pearl lets you look at a table of contents. I didn’t really like this feature. Perhaps it would be useful for very long documents.
Once you choose to open the attachment, the data is sent to the phone.
Here’s a screenshot of the document in Word. It has a heading, body text, and a diagram.
The heading and body text display correctly, but the diagram is totally lost.
I also tested the Pearl’s ability to display Excel spreadsheets.
Again, I’ll open the full attachment.
Here’s a screenshot of the spreadsheet in Excel. I created a quick example with formated cells and formulas.
The Excel spreadsheet displays correctly, although the numbers are difficult to read as the columns are shrunk to fit the Pearl’s screen.
Pressing the Menu button from within the Excel viewer, brings up a variety of options.
By clicking the trackball, you can edit individual cells.
You can expand the columns to fit the contents.
You can expand a single column or all columns in a spreadsheet.
Here, I have expanded all the columns in the spreadsheet. It is now possible to read the numbers, but the spreadsheet now extends beyond the screen’s edge. You can use the trackball to scroll the sheet.
Lastly, I tested the Pearl’s ability to display PowerPoint presentations.
Again, I’ll open the full attachment.
The sample presentation uses one of CNET’s standard PowerPoint templates and contains 3 slides–a title slide and two charts.
Here is a screenshot of the first chart slide.
The Pearl’s PowerPoint viewer automatically displays all a presentation’s slides stacked in a single view, which you can scroll through.
Using the trackball, you can select any one of the slides and open it in the full screen.
Looking at the first chart, the colors, and overall structures are visible, but the axis headings and scales are nearly impossible to read.
With less information, the second chart is slightly better than the first.
You can view each slide one-at-a-time or in a slide show.
If you can’t read a particular slide, the Pearl provides a Zoom feature to enlarge the slide.
When active, the Zoom feature places a slider bar on to the left of the screen. Using the trackball, you can zoom in and out on a slide.
Unfortunately, even when I zoomed in on the first chart, I couldn’t clearly read the headings.
The Pearl’s PowerPoint viewer also has an Enhance feature. I assumed this would try to improve the image’s quality and tried it.
When activated, I assume the Enhance feature pulls more data into the phone.
Unfortunately, the enhance feature displayed merely a blank screen.
If you can hold you hand very, very still, the 5x zoom does an OK job.
The camera is adequate for quick snapshots, but it won’t replace a digital camera.
Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Previously, Bill was an IT manager in the social research and energy industries. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisville, where he has also lectured on computer crime and crime prevention.
