Customer Reviews

BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Phone, Red (Sprint)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been a long time Palm user for it's calendar, contacts, notes, and medical reference capabilities, plus of course, some pocket chess and other fun things. But as you probably know, palm is not even trying to stay current, so when I went shopping for an integrative phone and PDA device I looked at all the contenders.

1. To be fair, I had to check out the Centro. I wasn't fond of the device overall and especially the keyboard. Plus, Palm OS is dead so I felt that it was time to move on.
2. Next up, the iPhone. This would be my first choice because it is so delicious. But no 3rd party apps are allowed and EDGE is slow!! I regrettably scratched it off my list.
3. Windows mobile. A friend has one of these devices and I checked it out. It was like XP on a phone: with all the click here and go there interface that just seemed cumbersome on a handheld. Plus, WM is famous for requiring MORE processor speed. It does 3rd party apps but it's a slow and cumbersome interface, so that too got scratched off my list.
3. Lastly, I looked into the infamous crackberry experience. I went to my local Sprint store and checked out the Pearl and Curve. They seemed nice in the hand, especially the Pearl. Small and solid, and the screen is easy to read. I did some additional homework, checking out the reviews on Youtube and Amazon, etc.

I purchased the Pearl (in the color red, and with my current service on Sprint). I downloaded the bPhone theme and started to get to know this device.

The home screen includes the big 3 BB apps: 1. email messages (which are pushed to the phone), 2. the calendar (with the next two events listed), and 3. the phone (with any missed calls listed). Additionally, upper left shows the Sprint bars and upper right the battery status. And you get the time and date as well. Overall, nice to look at and functional.

There is a dedicated hard key for apps. For me, this is the critical area and I have not been dissapointed. Like the Palm (and iPhone) each app has its icon. These can be arranged to your liking (or hidden if you don't use them often).

Within a couple days I was thinking I could almost leave my Palm TX as home and rely on my Pearl.

I became concerned that there is not much memory on this phone: 50mb. But just like my palm, I could load 3rd party apps with the reader on the device and the data on the memory card. So I put my drug guide and MSDict, as well as, some cool stuff from google (maps, calendar, docs) and went about transferring my contacts and notes.

Contacts can be transferred with MS Outlook but I don't have that so I used Vista's included MS Contacts. It was not perfect but it got the job done.

Notes from your Palm can not be simply moved over to the BB. I have decided to put just my essential notes on the phone and the remaining on Google docs. Sprint is very fast and I can get to these quickly if needed.

So it has been a week and I think I have fully converted from years of palm reliance to having an integrated phone and PDA with my Pearl. I love this little thing. The combination of keyboard, menu key, and trackball are just as easy to use as having a touch screen. And all touch screens end up with dead spots anyway, so it's a shortcoming that becomes frustrating.

Any problems?

Well, I did not like Suretype! so I set it to use multitap. As for multimedia, you can store your pics on a memory card (or get to Flickr quick enough) as well as music, video, and voice notes. The iPhone blows it away for multimedia but I don't really care. It's functional enough.

There really should be more memory on the phone. Perhaps it's a trade off on the small size of the Pearl. I do have ~6-7mb free and it seems to run OK like this but others have reported their phone slowing down with less than 10mb of free space.

The camera is only "OK". Great perhaps for sending pics in email but otherwise the picture quality is not very good (compared to my 5 megapix canon).

Basic (mobile type) of internet experience is fine with me. It is better than Palm's blazer but very basic nonetheless. If this is important to you, wait until the Bold or iPhone 2 comes out.

One last thing. Sprint Nav has an option to keep the screen on, but if you want to use google maps you'll need to download an older (unofficial) BB program called BBlight. It solved this issue for me.

So that's my review. It's been a week and I can now leave my Palm TX at home, feeling comfortable that I "got it all" on my Pearl =)

I got this exact phone back in June, and at I LOVED IT! I still love it, I have had a few glitches that I'm waiting on Sprint to fix, every morning, the phone erases all my text messages and unless I reset the phone by removing the battery, all my texts will be deleted upon getting them.
I have no problem with the amount of space on the phone and I haven't put in the media card. I took mine on vacation to the Keys and the camera did very well. My only problem there is you can't send pictures to a phone, they have to go to an email, which isn't as much fun.
I also like all the extras I got from Sprint for free, Including their navigation, Sprint TV, Sprint Music Store. Being a HUGE NASCAR fan, I really enjoy the NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, also free for Sprint Customers.
The screen is great and everything on the phone is easy to use.

I used to HATE all my Sprint phones, mainly because Sprint Customer Service, was TERRIBLE! But with their new President,CEO, they have been working to fix that and I'm glad.

Overall, other than the text messaging issue, I'm more than pleased with my wee little Blackberry Pearl!