With RIM's new BlackBerry Pearl (known in some markets as the 8100), the company has given us a BlackBerry that looks like a regular phone and supports typical consumer functionality, even if it still requires that back- end support and its associated cost.

Sporting quad-GSM connectivity, the Pearl is EDGE-enabled but it does not have Wi-Fi, 3G & video recorder. This is the first Blackberry to offer a 1.3 mega pixel camera. Though internal memory is only 64 MB, the expandable memory option more than makes up for this limitation.

The browser is not efficient out of the box. User will have to configure the right options, such as: JavaScript, HTML Tables, CSS style sheets, background colours, foreground colours. Once that is done, things look pretty good. There is even an option for having the browser emulate common browsers such as OpenWave,

Pocket IE and NetScape. The Pearl does boast of superior push e-mail capabilities. The Pearl has decent multimedia support for various video formats, including AVI, MP4, MOV and 3GP files. For music, the BlackBerry Pearl supports MP3, AAC, MIDI, and WAV files, among others.

Other than these new capabilities, the BlackBerry Pearl retains many of the same features that has made BlackBerrys popular, such as e-mail. The smart phone can sync with your company's BlackBerry Enterprise server with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise to deliver corporate e-mail in real time.

It also supports up to 10 personal/business POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts. The handset also includes popular instant-messaging clients such as Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and ICQ.

Blackberry Pearl 8100

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