sprocket i/o

Blackberry 8100 Pearl

When Dallas told me she had quit her job, I knew it was time for me to look for a new phone and service plan. Her previous company gave it’s employees a significant discount on data plans, and I had been borrowing an HTC Wizard (rebranded as the Cingular 8125). While I never took a liking to the Wizard, it was free, so I couldn’t complain too much. Looking around at the plan prices, I was reminded that my employer happily gives out Blackberry phones to it’s employees, with an unlimited data plan. So, I got one.

I had a choice between the Blackberry Pearl 8100 (small) and the Blackberry Curve 8320 (less small). The HTC Wizard was really chunky, so I opted to go for the smaller of the two and get the Blackberry Pearl. I regret this decision now, but not for the reasons you might think. First, the keyboard on the Pearl is surprisingly decent, with the most intelligent spelling correction I’ve used yet on a phone. The phone is not only sexy, but it’s super-light at 3.1oz. I keep thinking that I’ve forgotten my phone somewhere because I cannot feel it’s weight in my pockets. The screen and controls are pretty well done, but I’m going to have to get used to the trackball that is just under the screen. Bootup time is far faster than the last few phones I’ve owned as well.

User Interface

The UI on the Blackberry 8100 is quite decent, though I’m not sure how much of it has changed with this T-Mobile modified version. The home screen is clear, with my Fave-5 contacts displayed prominently. The menu chooser does not support the concept of categories, which makes things somewhat maddening as you can only see 6 of your 38 menu choices on the screen at any one time. Uninstalling some of the applications cuts down the menu choices somewhat, but it is hard to get under 30 items on the list. To uninstall an application, you have to go to Options -> Advanced Options -> Applications.

Browsing

The browser experience on the 8100 leaves a lot to be desired. The built-in browser, of which my phone has two copies: ‘Browser’ and ‘Blackberry Browser’, is sad at best. While it is fast over EDGE, it’s rendering is no better than the Sony Ericsson browser from 2001. Opera Mini 4.0 renders pages beautifully on the Blackberry, but you’re more likely to see Java exception errors than rendered pages with it as of the time of this writing. Once you see how beautifully pages render on the iPhone, it makes you quite sad to use the internet on a Blackberry.

E-Mail

The e-mail client on the Blackberry is really good, which is not a surprise as it’s what the phone is marketed toward. You can setup e-mail filters straight from the phone, to determine what e-mails get forwarded to you. The filtering rules are confusing to me however. Whenever I try to configure the phone to only forward e-mails that are sent directly to me without the word ‘cron’ in the subject, I get no e-mails at all. The phone, as provided by T-Mobile, comes with no printed user guide, though the Blackberry 8100 User Guide is available as a PDF.

Coverage vs UMA

The biggest problem with my Blackberry is that it’s on the T-Mobile network. While I have great respect for the folks at T-Mobile, my home is in a complete black-hole when it comes to coverage on their network. While the phone is happy to make emergency phone-calls by roaming to Cingular, the two companies don’t have a general roaming relationship here. The workaround is that I’ve been giving people my GrandCentral phone number instead, which forwards to by work phone, cellphone, and skype. My coworkers who selected the Blackberry Curve are not affected by the lack of coverage here, as the Curve’s support UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access). UMA is really exciting — basically, if your phone a cannot get signal through towers, it will connect instead via WiFi. I’ve been looking forward to this for years, and the fact that I missed out on it’s support depresses me a bit. The Blackberry Pearl 8120 does support UMA, like the Curve, but this model appears to only be available in Europe for now.

Sync & Bluetooth

The Blackberry appears to be very well behaved as a Bluetooth device. It was trivial to configure my MacBook Pro to use the Blackberry as an internet connection over bluetooth. The Pearl supports EDGE, and T-Mobile seems to have a pretty good EDGE network in the areas I have used it.

The Bad news is that synchronization with the Pearl is pretty bad. Thankfully, Blackberry gives away the formerly commercial PocketMac for Blackberry for free. Surprisingly, It’s a PPC application, which means it runs under Rosetta on Intel Macs. The Address Book sync feature works well enough, but if you explore some of it’s other features such as Notes synchronization, expect crashes. One huge feature missing on both the phone and the software is the ability to clear out all AddressBook entries from the phone. You need Windows to do that.

Linux users may want to see How to Sync your Blackberry in Linux.

Summary

The Pearl is a nice phone, held back by poor sync software. It should hold me over until the Android phones are available.