Blackberry Pearl 3G 9105

Next to the success of the Bold 9700 in the business community and the more populist appeal of the Curve 8520, the BlackBerry Pearl looked as if it was beginning to gather dust.  But it's back now, and better than ever.


A little bit of the Bold, a little bit of the Curve

The one new feature that the Pearl couldn't do without, of course, is the optical trackpad, which puts paid to the physical trackball which could get stuck or clogged up with dirt.  Its replacement works at least as well, and your finger slides over it perfectly.  We're impressed by how fast and accurate it is, and picking out an icon in a menu is easy enough to give plenty of touchscreen phones a run for their money.


When you pick it up, the Pearl feels like a Bold which has been squeezed from either side.  It uses the same materials and has the same basic aesthetic.  RIM was sensible enough to supply two soft rubber cases: they're pretty basic, but do improve the grip.  And given that they come free, we're not going to complain.  But you'll have to hope that your network chooses wisely, as the colour scheme is up to them.

The top side of the phone is where the multimedia hotkeys are, and they give quick access to the MP3 player and other features.  The only hitch is that they are also used to lock and unlock the phone, and you're never quite sure what's going to happen when you press one.

Small but powerful

The Pearl 3G might be small, but isn't a cut-down version of the Bold.  With a 600 MHz processor, it doesn't drag—quite the opposite, in fact.  There's actually some pretty impressive hardware here, including, 802.11n WiFi, 3G/EG+, Bluetooth and aGPS.

We're not going to talk you through the BlackBerry OS 5 interface again, as it's exactly the same here as on other phones we've tested.  You might think that the screen is too small to fit everything in, but that's not the case at all.  It has 340 x 400 pixels on just 2.3'', which works out at about the same definition as high-end phones with 4'' screens with 480 x 800 pixels.  The upshot of all of this is a very legible display, which is a treat to look at.

Small keyboard works well

Let's get one thing straight: a 14-button alphanumeric keypad doesn't really fit with a business-orientated smartphone.  As we've said, reading mails on the screen is a treat, but replying to them is a little more complicated.  There's an intelligent predictive text function which speeds things up, but there's no use pretending it's as useful as a full QWERTY keyboard.

That said, the Pearl 3G has very large keys that are very easy to reach: you never hit the wrong button.  Another good feature is that some of the buttons at the bottom have two different features depending on which side you press, and it's as easy to feel them out using your fingers as if they two separate keys.

In short, this is a smartphone for people who want to be able to check their mails wherever they are, but who only ocassineed to offer an instant reply straight aw

Multimedia features for show


That title might be a little harsh, actually.  The audio player is excellent, mostly thanks to the very usable shortcuts along the top.  The screen has enough detail for videos to work well, even if the small surface area isn't that nice.

Things get much more tricky when you go online.  Combining a small screen—however sharp it is—with a patchy web browser is a recipe for disaster.  Even though RIM knows its software has problems and is working on a new Webkit-based browser, that isn't, for the time being, available.

Just like with writing e-mails, web browsing is only really an occasional activity on the Pearl 3G.  Fortunately the presence of 3G/3G+ means you don't have to wait that long, which would really have discouraged us.

The last item is the GPS, which works very well but is another tool that struggles on such a small screen.  It's so hard to see as to be almost unusable when driving.

As you can see, the Pearl 3G is an excellent hybrid business smartphone.  Anybody who doesn't want to tie themselves down over the weekend and stay in touch with their job 24/7 will fall in love with this phone.  Others are more likely to prefer the Bold.