In 2006, the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100 premiered as the first small BlackBerry handset. Its successor, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120, added features like a 2-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi to the equation. Now, the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 puts GPS in place of Wi-Fi, making it easier to navigate your way around the UK. Does this new Pearl find its way with sat-nav or just get lost among its siblings?
The RIM BlackBerry 8110 is available on T-Mobile and Vodafone for free on a monthly contact.
Strengths
Aesthetically, you'll be hard-pressed to pick the 8110 out of a Pearl design line up. Coloured in blue, black or pink, it's identical to the original Pearl 8100, so business users looking for a slim phone won't be in for any cosmetic shocks.
Adding onboard GPS functionality to an already good phone is a great idea and it's what makes this particular model interesting. Unlike the Pearl 8100 or 8120 with Wi-Fi, you can use this phone as a fully-fledged satellite navigation device while driving or walking.
We tested it out using Telmap Navigator on Vodafone and TeleNav 5.1 on T-Mobile and found it picked up satellites quickly. We found having GPS to be a really useful feature, particularly when we were lost in town.
The loudspeaker was loud enough to hear instructions clearly and if you needed to, you could always plug your headphones straight into the 3.5mm headphone jack. In terms of other features, it's similar to the BlackBerry 8120 -- minus Wi-Fi.
Weaknesses
It seems that RIM is so chuffed with the original BlackBerry Pearl 8100's design that it's rehashing it over and over again. Are BlackBerry users starting to get glassy-eyed with this 'new' phone?
It's not that we're complaining -- we like the Pearl's design and think adding GPS to the whole package was an excellent step forward. But we do hope that RIM has some new ideas up its sleeve for future models, particularly 3G.
No 3G means that browsing the Internet can be sluggish at times. We also think that the 2-megapixel camera could be given an update and an FM radio wouldn't go unappreciated.
Conclusion
RIM hasn't gone down the all-in-one route and instead opted for adding one feature per Pearl, which we respect on some levels. Packing too many features into a phone can end badly, but we do fear that some BlackBerry users might expect more.
Design-wise, we'd really start to see RIM make an effort to do something different, even if it isn't much. Keeping the same casing for every model makes things confusing for everyone. However, the important thing to remember is that the 8110 does what it says on the tin and if you're looking for a BlackBerry with GPS, then your wait is over.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday
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Deepurple 2 October 2009
Good: It's compact and full of features
Bad: occasionaly freezes
Comment: Apart from a monthly freeze this little compact dynamite is great. I've had it 18months now and haven't looked back. if you look around there are lot's of applications for this, it's very versatile. It's menus are easy and brilliant for email and IM. Great value.
bathugeo 24 March 2008
Good: It's like driving a German car - everything works
Bad: Lack of wi-fi and 3G; cost; profiles
Comment: Comparing this phone with an HTC Windows phone is like comparing an MG Rover with a BMW. The latter might be more expensive to buy; however, it does the job reliably when you need it and is cheaper in the long-run.
I have used a variety of Windows Mobile phones for 4 years now and although they had great features, the underlying problem was that they (a) were PDAs first and phones second and (b) quite often just didn't work.
Going over to a Blackberry when my T-Mobile MDAII was due for renewal has been like going from night to day.
1. Call quality. I regularly used to have problems with people hearing me and dropped calls. Now I have none. This might of been helped by going back to a 2G network but it is still good.
2. Bluetooth. I use my phone in the car a lot (with a BMW) and this phone actually works reliably! It doesn't crash all the time. Better still the audio quality is noticeably better and I now hardly ever get people complaining that they can't hear me.
3. Phone crashing. All the Windows phones I have had have had to rebooted regularly. Worse this occasionally happened when I needed to make an urgent call or send an urgent email. The Windows phone would then well over a minute to reboot. The Blackberry has yet to crash in a month and even if it did, it seems to only take a second to reboot.
4. Trackball. I was a bit wary of going over to a phone that didn't have a touch screen. However, the Pearl trackball is a fantastic alternative. There is no stylus to fiddle around with or to lose. Better the trackball is actually a quicker way of selecting what you want. It is also better for one-handed use.
5. Web browsing. The web broswers is a huge improvement over Microsoft's effort in the Window's phone. Faster and more reliable: I download pages more quickly on this 2G phone than I did on HTC's 3G phones. The trackball is a great navigation tool and the browser seems to do a good job of downloading complex pages designed for PC screens.
6. Email. Microsoft called their push-email technology in ActiveSync a 'Blackberry killer'. However, whilst it is indeed just as good at instantly delivering emails, there the similarity ends. Blackberry's way of downloading emails automatically as you scroll down them is much better than MS's manual download process (which often didn't work). One feature missing on the Blackberry is the ability to turn off emails at the weekend.
7. Typing. I was pleased to learn about Blackberry's keyboard shortcuts. For example, typing a double space automatically adds a full-stop and capitalises the next word. The Suretype also works well (much better than Windows equivalents). It guesses better what you are going to type and BB have put more effort into automating fixing common mistakes and abreviations (e.g. dont to don't). All-in, it is much better thought through than the Windows interface and the 20 key-keyboard on the Pearl is quicker than the full keyboard on the HTC phones. Plus it doesn't have irritating design faults, such as having the send key right next to the Q and W keys meaning that it is every so easy to send a message before you have finished it, proving that HTC and Microsoft haven't really bothered to do any usablity testing on their products.
8. GPS. Having this feature is cool. Although I have navigation in my car already, it is good to have a standby if I am ever in another car or walking. Unfortunately, the car navigation software (Telenav) is a chargeable extra and even when I tried to install the free trial using the card provided with the phone it said that the server was unavailable. I asked Telenav support for help and they said they would get back to me three weeks ago. Fortunately, Google maps works well and much better than Blackberry's equivalent. (Why did Blackberry bother writing an inferior alternative?)
9. Calendar and Tasks. This works well although it could do with a few extra features, for exam
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