BlackBerry Pearl

Finally, BlackBerry flips with Pearl

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) Ltd. on Wednesday unveiled its first ever flip smart phone, the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220.

The first flip form factor BlackBerry comes at a time when RIM is tweaking its traditionally business-only devices and continuing on its path of targeting consumers and corporate users alike by adding a host of multimedia capabilities. Adding a flip phone to its portfolio taps a new user base: flip phone fans that didn't bite at the original Pearl's candy-bar design.

Research In Motion that facing mounting competition from Apple Inc.'s iPhone, is trying to extend its success beyond business users with its first flip model. Consumers accounted for about 60 percent of new subscribers in the first quarter and now make up more than 40 percent of customers. About 75 percent of mobile phones sold in the United States are the flip kind, Balsillie said.

"The most common preference is the flip and yet it's the most unaddressed because it requires some special innovation," Balsillie said. The company created a special hinge for the Pearl that gives more room for the keyboard and trackball. The Pearl Flip will be available in the United States from Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile unit.

It sports a 240x320 display, only now it folds out. The keypad still uses BlackBerry's Suretype system, which places two letters per key. But the buttons are more spacious and feel easier to use than those on earlier Pearls.

The nicest touches is that the external screen displays incoming e-mails with a brief snippet of the message so you don't have to open the phone to know what the e-mail is about. The front of the phone is jet black and looks like it will attract its fair share of fingerprints.

Moreover the quad-band phone (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) is set to be released through T-Mobile, though price and availability have not been set yet.

Some wonder if BlackBerry is taking a risk with this design. A lot of Pearl customers are new to RIM anyway, so they're not wedded to any design. So you give them a different design but keep the same BlackBerry experience. It provides that much more choice, and that should continue RIM's success story as it reaches out to more consumers.

Additionally, the RIM has finally got a flip phone to market, phone fashion has again moved on, with slider-phones (where the keyboard retracts) and all-screen models like the iPhone setting the trends.



A second new model, the BlackBerry Bold, maintains the brand’s traditional candy bar form factor, and does support 3G – in fact the pumped up HSDPA (aka 3G Broadband) iteration.

And where the Pearl Flip has a narrow keypad, the wide-bodied Bold sports a full QWERTY keyboard. The Bold also adds GPS support and, like the Flip, wi-fi.

Regardless of snipes against the Pearl Flip, the Canadian-based RIM steamrolls on. One in 10 phones sold in the US is now a BlackBerry, RIM says, with 5.6 million new subscribers added in the last quarter according to Gartner figures.

The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 is expected to be available from several global carriers in the fall. It will first be available through T-Mobile in the U.S. Pricing has yet to be announced.