The Blackberry Pearl 8130; perfect combination of sleek design and functionality
Written: Mar 02 '08
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Email, messaging, browser, camera
Cons: Video recording and playback is choppy, at best
The Bottom Line: A perfect blend of business and pleasure, the 8130 fits the bill.
|
|
|
| ivplay's Full Review: RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Smartphone |
The much-anticipated release of the updated Blackberry Pearl 8130 was met with much fanfare and many folks saying “FINALLY!”. The 8130 marks RIM’s accomplishment of what has been slowly progressing for a number of years; a business-caliber smartphone with a great media package built in!
Recently the Blackberry 7130 that I was using developed major problems with the scroll wheel whereby it wouldn’t move in the direction I was trying to go. When this is your major mode of navigation between emails, web browsers and telephone calls this obviously presents a problem. I went to my corporate cell phone guru and requested a replacement and after some careful discussion and consideration landed on the 8130 Pearl with Verizon Wireless services. The Pearl has improved on the usability of the smartphone for the technophile business person while not compromising on the qualities that have made Blackberry the name in business phone/mail clients.
Out of the box
The 8130 arrived on my desk in a compact box with the following inside:
8130 Pearl, Silver case
AC adapter
USB cable
Wired headset
Nylon protective cover
BlackBerry Desktop software CD
The AC adapter is a travel adapter, meaning that the prongs rotate to ‘hide’ inside the base. This comes in handy for me as I often put the adapter in my computer bag and carry it along, just in case. The USB cable is the ubiquitous USB to USB-mini cable which acts as both a mobile charger and data connection to any USB enabled computer, while the wireless headset is of the 3.5mm variety (stereo, finally!) and the protective cover is by far the cheapest, most uninviting carrying case I have seen to date. Throw this and find yourself a much better, more protective case!
Physical Appearances
Blackberry (RIM) has finally stepped up to the plate to compete in terms of aesthetics for their products. The older 7130 that I had as well as the classic looking (for RIM) 7200 series were much more bulky and not quite as modern looking as much of the competition on the market for the past few years. With the Pearl 8130 RIM has made a flashier-looking and sturdier platform while shrinking the size requirements and also improving the features and applications that come standard with the device.
The compact 4” X 2” by 0.5” chassis is constructed of a hard silver plastic that resists scuffing much better than the old 7130 I had previously. IT is much smaller and dominated by the beautiful 2.25” 260 X 240 screen which renders 64K colors. The screen is not a touch screen, so don’t try to use a stylus to navigate as you might have done with the Palm or Pocket PC. That being said, the navigation over the screen real-estate is accomplished via the ‘pearl’, a small trackball mounted just below the screen itself. The ball is opaque white with a backlight behind it, making it appear much like the namesake of a pearl. To either side of the pearl are buttons used for navigation (back, menu, talk and end call buttons) and the pearl itself can be depressed to select items with the totally mobile cursor.
Below this row of action buttons resides the SureType keyboard, which you will either love or hate. I happen to be one that loves the keyboard, but that may be due the fact that my previous phone (the 7130) also used a SureType keyboard. Most keys have two letters on them, and so long as you can spell correctly the built in dictionary and smart feature will select the appropriate word without having to double-press as older phones required. I find that about 95% of the words I type come out right the first time, and if there are words that you use more often the computer seems to ‘learn’ the pattern and suggest the appropriate word after a few tries. The keys are quite small, but I have found that even my relatively large hands and fingers have little to no problem navigating the keyboard and typing, even without looking. Speaking of typing while not focusing on the keyboard, the keys have a nice resistance and tactile feel, giving a knowing click when depressed. In this fashion you don’t need to look at the screen at all times to ensure that the letters are selected, making this a phone that you can text or type while driving and still keep your concentration where it belongs, on the road… Not that I would do that or anything…
The Pearl 8130 comes with a 2MP camera which can take photos or record video, and improvement over the previous iteration of this phone which could only take photos. That being said, the camera is better suited to photos as the processor isn’t quite strong enough to take quality video that will playback jitter-free, an annoying quality in any video camera. The video function is passable at best, while the photos from the 2MP camera with five zoom preference and built in flash are very good for a camera phone.
Also present on the side of the 8130 is a micro-SD slot. This is obviously a welcome addition, as with only 64MB of onboard memory and an address book that entails the whole company, I would quickly run out of space for my photos, music and videos. As I have an mp3 player for that sort of thing and don’t find much pleasure in choppy video, I basically use the micro-SD card that I purchased after the fact for photos. That being said, for those of you who would use the functionality of the media player the Pearl can playback files of the following types: MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC , eAAC , AMR-NB, and MIDI for the music and MPEG4, WMV, and H.263 for video clips.
In Use
For the mobile professional on the go, the Blackberry Pearl carries on the strong tradition that RIM has developed allowing folks to stay in touch with their email and contacts via a Blackberry enterprise server. The Blackberry server can interact with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise, of which my company uses the later. If your company will allow you to do so, the device can support up to 10 different POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts; unfortunately my workplace decided against allowing this! (Can still check them via the internet browser) With the connection to the GroupWise account at my company I was able to select some or all of the contact information for my whole company and load it on the phone, and once I accomplished this I could also add in any and all additional contacts for uploading. Photos taken with the camera can be attached to the address book entries, thus flashing the caller’s and emailer’s picture up when a new call or email arrive. This is a nice feature!
Emails are instantaneous, sometimes making it to my phone before they hit my computer, which is awfully fast. Email attachments are supported with Excel, Word, and Powerpoint being the primary applications I use on a daily basis. The Excel sheets work much better on the screen of the Pearl than on the 7130 I had previously, and Powerpoint presentations show up great due to the fact that the Pearl will rotate them and fit to screen, allowing even some smaller type to be easily readable. PDF’s are supported, but I have had no luck with them to date. The first view is too small to read, and upon zooming in the type is so garbled that it is illegible. This one minor issue doesn’t affect me greatly, but depending on your use of the PDF format you may need to find a work-around for this.
The calendar and task function work well on the phone although I only use the calendar function. I do use the task function on the GroupWise client of our company computers, but when they tie over to the Pearl any and all reminder data seems to be wiped clean. As the reminders don’t work I typically use the paper planner for tasks, which has always worked well for me. Perhaps with the Microsoft Exchange or IBM Domino platforms this functionality works better, I am not sure.
The web-browser has been improved much over the 7130 that I had previously with support for Verizon’s EV-DO network, raising speeds to the 300-600 kbps range. It is noticeably faster than the 7130, which was reported to have EV-DO support as well. While in theory they both may have worked with EV-DO, the 8130 is noticeable faster in my use, anyway. Our company has developed web apps for the Blackberry internally which I can use to see how each of the factories are performing in real time, and this is nice.
NOTE: As with anything that makes you more connected, you need to take care not to overuse it. Just because I can see how each plant is performing, I have started to wean myself away from this. We have hired very competent people to manage each facility and I need to have faith that they will call if needed. Managing to the appropriate level has become much more difficult over time as items such as the Pearl have increased the availability and speed of delivery of information, and I am doing my best not to abuse this…
Other notable items on the 8130 are support for Bluetooth devices (works well with my Motorola H500 and my wife’s Motorola S9) and GPS support. While my company doesn’t pay for the GPS program, I have read elsewhere that it isn’t the greatest. The Blackberry maps are great for me when traveling, and supposedly the unit can track your movements in real time. Without using it myself I wouldn’t want to comment any more than that.
The Pearl comes with a slim 900mAh, 3.7V Lithium Ion battery. The reported talk time for the battery is 3.6 hours with a standby time of up to 9 days. Since I don’t believe I have ever talked on the phone for 3.6 hours straight, I can’t dispute this claim. In my use, I generally charge the batter on my way to work, which is a 15-20 minute commute depending on traffic. This is enough charging for my use, and I would classify myself as a moderate to heavy user of this phone. It seems as though browsing the internet and other data takes more battery than using the phone function, which is backwards from the previous 7130.
Am I forgetting anything? Let’s see… Oh yeah, this is a cell phone! In my use on the Verizon network I have found that this phone has better reception than the 7130 by far. When I am traveling to one of our remote factories off the interstate I never did get cell coverage with the 7130. I could text or email, but phone conversations were so broken and spotty it wasn’t worth trying. With the 8130 I have found that not only is the reception better, it is good enough that I don’t drop calls along these roads at all anymore. This is both a blessing and a curse, as I am now even more accessible via phone and email!
Conclusion
Congratulations, RIM! You have finally accomplished something that users have been desiring for a long time; you have melded business with pleasure in a wonderful, compact package. The Blackberry Pearl 8130 has the strong business background with instant email, messaging and web browsing along with the media recording and playback that the casual user will enjoy. Highly recommended.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): company
Recommended for: Business Executives - Powerful and Professional
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.