BlackBerry Pearl 8120 Review

Look and feel

The Pearl is without doubt the most attractive of RIM's Blackberry range and the 8120 is another looker. Although a touch larger than conventional mobiles, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 is relatively cmpact for a smartphone. RIM manages this by including a SureType keypad rather than a full QWERTY.

Ease of use

The trackball is great for speedy navigation `around the Pearl 8120's menu system, however, the mini-keyboard offers two QWERTY letters per key instead of T9's three or four. This can take a bit of getting used to. You need to live with the system for a while to get used to it.

Features

The most notable absence on the new Pearl is 3G, though it is Quad-band GSM with EDGE. Still, it is great to see Wi-Fi make it into the Pearl range, and Bluetooth is still here too. There is a camera on board - two megapixels (up from 1.3 megapixels on the original Pearl), with a flash unit. There is also a media player that lets you create and edit playlists on the device itself.

Performance

Email is flawless, as you'd expect from a BlackBerry. And, Wi-Fi really does make a difference, especially to those with a network at home.

Mentioning the web browser gives us a chance to highlight one of the many new features. The browser incorporates a full page view with a magnifying glass that you can use to zoom into a particular area and it really makes the most of the small screen.

Battery life

The Pearl 8120 offers a good, mid-range battery life.