AfterTek

The Blackberry Pearl 8100, is slim as a RAZR. The glossy black finish, bright 240 x 260-pixel color screen, and silver side bezels radiate style.

At half an inch thick, the Pearl is like two stacked iPod nanos. The old BlackBerry scroll wheel has been replaced by a trackball seemingly borrowed from the SideKick 3; as a navigation tool.The Pearl features an even smaller version of the SureType keyboard introduced on the 7100t…tiny keys. ..only a passable alternative to a full QWERTY keyboard.

Another minus: the microSD card slot is located behind the battery.
Riding on T-Mobile’s EDGE network, the Pearl delivers a reliable if not speedy data connection; it also supports quad-band GSM/GPRS networks. Bluetooth 2.0 is onboard, but only to support handsfree and serial port profiles.

The Pearl finally sees BlackBerry catching up with the competition in the multimedia department, with features like a 1.3-megapixel camera (which washes out colors but retains sharp detail), a music and video player.

ORGANIZER Can sync contacts, calendars, memos, and tasks with Outlook, [and others]

WEB RIM hasn’t made great strides forward with the Web browser

E-MAIL As with all recent BlackBerrys, setting up an e-mail account is a simple process…images, documents, and PDFs are viewable but can’t be edited.

CALL QUALITY The calls we made with the Pearl on T-Mobile’s network were fine, but there was a rather airy quality to them…
VERDICT The Pearl is the sexiest smart phone yet, and a strong performer to boot.