Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

I got a Blackberry Pearl to replace my Blackberry 8700c. I like the fact that it’s smaller, has a camera with a flash and plays mp3s and videos. In addition, it a good phone, has amazing battery life, has bluetooth and looks good oh yeah and does email/calendar really really well, because of course it’s a Blackberry.

It has Suretype, a software replacement for a full keyboard which uses prediction software and a dictionary to guess which word you are trying to enter. It works very well, not as well as a full keyboard, but I’m not writing novels on this thing, usually just short messages. I actually don’t mind it now, it took a little while to get used to but I quickly over came any obstacles in my acceptance.

The camera on it is ok, not great but it’s good for stupid little quick pictures of your co-worker doing something funny or a pet doing something cute. It also plays mp3s and some videos. While it’s nothing to challenge an Ipod or Zune but it’s pretty good for a person who doesn’t already have an mp3 player. The upgradeable internal memory will take up to a 2 GB in the MicroSD format. The device also functions as a thumb drive, so you can load any document that you’d like onto it.

So far, I like it and while the media playback won’t replace my Ipod, the email and phone functions make this my current favorite.