BlackBerry Pearl - the smallest, thinnest BlackBerry ever. Smart and stylish, offering exciting new features like a camera, media player, and push-to-talk, with your calendar and contacts close at hand

The BlackBerry Pearl (8100) is a mobile phone developed by Research In Motion, and the first Blackberry device with a camera and other multimedia features. It was released in Q3 of 2006.

The Pearl is a quad-band GSM device.

Specifications:

Dimensions (W x D x H): 2 in x 0.6 in x 4.2 in.  Weight: 3.2 oz. Talk Time: 210 Minutes (3.5 hours). Standby time: Up to 360 hours (15 days).

The Pearl comes with the following standard features:

1.3 megapixel camera with flash, self portrait mirror, and 5x digital zoom. Media player with support for MP3, AAC, AMR, polyphonic MIDI and WAV sound formats. Media player with support for MPEG-4 and H.263 video formats. Bluetooth 2.0. Address book & Calendar. Web browser. BlackBerry Maps. Push e-mail. Voice Dialing. Speakerphone. SMS and MMS text messaging. Instant messaging (on T-Mobile version only). Supports up to 4GB MicroSD Note: 4GB microSDHC chip requires May 2007 or later OS.

Blackberry Pearl is aimed towards both business users and consumers. Its advertising campaign features several people including Mariska Hargitay and Douglas Coupland. The BlackBerry Pearl provides Quad-Band network support on 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS and EDGE networks to allow for international roaming between North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

It does not support high speed 3G data capabilities such as UMTS or HSDPA. [edit] Comparison with other BlackBerry devices Most BlackBerry devices have a full keyboard. The Pearl uses a modified QWERTY layout on a 4 row 5 column keypad, with a predictive input algorithm known as SureType. Typing on a Pearl is different from typing on other non-SureType BlackBerry devices.

The Pearl supports the full range of BlackBerry enterprise functionality. Unlike most BlackBerries, the Pearl includes a music player and other multimedia features. It requires the purchase of a MicroSD memory card to support storage of multimedia files beyond the 64MB provided internally. Most notably, the Pearl uses a white trackball similar in appearance to a white pearl instead of the traditional BlackBerry scroll wheel.

This facilitates horizontal scrolling and is the origin of the Pearl's name. Third-party applications can be used to change the color of the Pearl.

The Pearl is currently available with T-Mobile, AT&T Mobility (formerly Cingular Wireless), Cincinnati Bell Wireless, and Cellular One in the United States, Turkcell and Avea in Turkey, Claro in Brazil, Airtel, Hutch in India,Telcel in Mexico, Rogers Wireless in Canada, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone in Australia, Vodafone in New Zealand, SingTel in Singapore and all networks in the UK.

Read the Wikipedia article about BlackBerry Pearl...

Photo author: bbphotoblog from flickr.com