Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The BlackBerry Pearl is a great smartphone

I just got another BlackBerry (8130 with Verizon) after using a Windows smartphone for a year, and I can tell you that the BlackBerry platform just rocks.

If you're considering a Pearl, I'm sure you've read mixed reviews about the SureType non-QWERTY keyboard. In my opinion, the thing works just great. Its predictive typing is really amazing - it learns new words from your contacts and your email. I've had some small problems with a couple of words, but really no more problems that I've had with my Treo. Also,

It's niiiiice and small. It's a nice break to have a normal-sized phone that can do everything I need. I was worried that the screen might be too small, but it's not. It's a great size, and superbly crisp. 

In my opinion, there's really no comparison with WM5 (I haven't used WM6). The BlackBerry suite of applications works amazingly well. The way that it highlights any phone number (for one-touch dialing) from any application is the way things SHOULD work. And the trackball is a great input mechanism. And RIM just announced today that an update this year will allow you to edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents. But even without that ability, the BlackBerry works just the way I want it to.

1 comment:

Jason Shamroski said...

And I use the Blackberry 8320 from T-Mobile, it just works. As far as WM6 goes, I still have a T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur) and the memory management is still a problem - I can't believe I have to kill all the apps to use the camera. The BlackBerry just works - it's that simple.