Jan 16, 2007 02:05 PM
7742 Views
(Updated Jan 16, 2007 02:10 PM)
I was first time blackberry user and was nervous before buying this latest Pearl model, as it was quite untested model even among die hard Blackberry users and that too with quite few changes from standard blackberry models. Having been released in US itself in Sept 2006, it was for a refreshing change to see in Indian market quite early in Dec 2006 even before it was released in Singapore and other APAC Markets.
After finally laying my hands on it, I should say I was pleasantly surprised to see the speed at which the emails were being 'pushed' from my Corporate email server sometimes even faster than I could see in my laptop. But this feature coming from blackberry is hardly surprising or worth holding your breath as this was expected from them. What is worth exploring is their seamless fusion of popular consumer features into this office workhorse. The looks are stunning enough to start with, all metal and shining in black & chrome (for once a great relief from the tacky plastic look of most of the phones in market except of course some rare gems like Razr..).
The camera quality is decent enough for your family and functional snaps..and the special button on the right hand - side edge of the phone for activating camera is quite useful for quick snaps and also for landscape photos. One the left hand - side edge there is another button for activating voice dialing which is really a nice and useful feature while driving and on bluetooth. (Though you need American accent for all your contact names to be recognized by the voice dialing software which is quite a challenge considering our Indian Names.I had to really twist through my very Indian contact names into multiple combinations to make the phone recognize them and am still trying with some.No its not as bad as it sounds..names like home, office etc are quite easy..)
Both these buttons help us activate respective features without even looking at phone obviating the need to go through the maze of menus. Coming to the most useful feature of the phone, it should undoubtedly be the Pearl after which this phone is named..which incidentally replaces the blackberry side wheel which has become synonymous with blackberry. This pearl is really a track ball in the middle of the phone front face, which you can use for sliding through items and selecting at one go. People familiar with earlier Sony jog dial will love it. The key pad though is again a deviation from standard blackberry QUERTY keypads (which means button will have one alphabet like in standard PC keyboard) by having two alphabets per each button. Yes, it is a bit crowded out there but not as bad as some of the reviews of pearl on web suggest.
The Sure type technology software ensures, it understands intelligently the word you are trying to type through single tap (as opposed to double tap in Multi tap method of typing) and will learn in the process the non standard words as well. You can always disable it and use multi tap if you are used to SMS'ing with multi tap method, though I would recommend to try the sure type typing which is simply great and as intuitive as it can get. There are lot of other small things which I find are quite thoughtful features like, if you are in middle of some task or application, you can easily switch on to another application, without losing the original work, which I found was lacking in most of the phones I used earlier.
Those small little things makes it much easier and useful which shows that the 2-3 odd research put in for Pearl by RIM has really translated into something. Internet browsing is quite good, with even google maps showing as clear as in your laptop. Yes, google maps is one of the features along with google talk, yahoo messenger etc. Other features are sd card for storing your media files, video player, audio player, speaker phone etc which I haven't explored much. Price though at 25 k, I think could be on lesser side. One apprehension I nurture of this phone is the long term functionality of pearl track ball, as it gets most the touch time of our fingers and load when using the phone for either speaking or while using for mails, that you wonder if it could withstand all the wear and tear in long run.Well as of now, I am having a ball with this little ball- pearl !!
