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BlackBerry's Latest: What A Pearla |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Wednesday, 29 November 2006 |
The latest handset form Research In Motion, the Blackberry
Peal was announced today on the Vodafone network with Optus due to have the
phone in the very near future.
Though Telstra made no announcement today regarding the BlackBerry
Pearl it's almost certain to offer the latest from RIM.
The Pearl
is not RIM's first attempt at a consumer smartphone, but it's probably its best
and while traditional business Blackberry users may think the lack of a QWERTY
keyboard makes this phone a dud for email, it has real potential to draw in new
users to the BlackBerry fold.
Sporting the sort of features found in other lifestyle
consumer devices, camera, MP3 player, a healthy storage allowance and a pocketable
form factor, the Pearl
has a lot going for it.
Many of the features you will find in the Pearl have been
standard issue on 3G smartphones for a couple of years already, but the GSM
components allow RIM to make this handset small and light compared to even the
latest 3G phones on the market.
Connection speeds on the Pearl are limited to GPRS/EDGE, so
features like video calling are not possible, but expect good support for
viewing email attachments and of course email is provided by BlackBerry push
technology so your email will be delivered (like a text message) rather than
you having to proactively connect to check and retrieve them. It also means you
can integrate it with your work email more easily.
There's also a nifty new navigation device which RIM
describes as a trackball which from reports sounds a bit like the mouse pad on
a laptop computer rather than an actual trackball.
Though this phone is less a business device than past BlackBerry's
the target market is still going to have a very professional flavour. The Pearl may find favour with
executive types who want to access their emails, but don't really need to send
a lot of long emails.
These people will prefer the smaller form factor and the
addition of lifestyle multimedia functions missing in some of the more serious
devices from RIM. SO you're still more likely to see this phone in the hands of
a business users than a teenager or casual phone user.
Vodafone is first off the rank, with Optus to follow
shortly. Vodafone has priced the BlackBerry Pearl at $699.00 (RRP) and has some
email bundles including the "all you can use" Heavy plan which is priced at
A$49.95.
Spec
Check: BlackBerry Pearl
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