RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8120 user reviews
Tell us what you think
Should you buy it?
Ask your Facebook friends and Twitter followers if you should buy the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8120
on Mobile Phones 
Facebook 
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
Twitter 
RSS Feeds 
Send Us Tips
User reviews1
dpr20 1 April 2008
Good: Trackball, QWERTY keyboard
Bad: No POP3 or IMAP e-mail
Comment: I was given this phone as a free upgrade from Orange and after careful consideration I decided not to keep it. The major (and totally unexpected) problem for me was the absence of a POP3/IMAP email client. When I selected this phone (supposedly for its email capabilities) I didn't realise that I would no other choice but to pay an additional £10-£14 per month to access my email via Blackberry's push service. With my previous (Windows mobile) phone, I just checked my email using IMAP, which worked well (albeit a little slowly) and didn't cost anything like this amount in data charges.
This problem aside, on the whole I found this phone to be well designed. The QWERTY keyboard worked quite well once I got used to it and the trackball was also very easy to use. I did find Blackberry's bespoke OS rather clunky though, and limited compared to Windows mobile. I also thought the phone was rather flimsily constructed.