If there’s one phone that did more than any other to bring the Blackberry brand crashing out of the corporate playground, and into the consumer consciousness, it was the original Pearl. Of course, one could argue that being the phone of choice for everyone in Sex And The City helped, and one could also argue that it was predominantly young professionals who got them anyway, not the average man and woman on the street, but my point still stands.
The Blackberry Pearl was the phone that made people outside of boardrooms want a Blackberry phone.
Annnnnnnnnnnnd now, according to Crackberry, there’s a new Pearl on the way! It’s called the Blackberry Pearl 9100, and it promises to bring the Pearl brand up to the level of its siblings, the Bold, the Curve and, of course, the Storm. And as you can see, the Pearl 9100 is basically what you get if you take the original Pearl, fire it through the Large Hadron Collider with the Blackberry Storm 2, and catch what falls out the other end.
The first noticeable difference from the original is that the thing that actually gave the Pearl its name isn’t there any more…
Yup, that’s right. No more trackball. Instead what you get is a touchpad just like the one you get on the Blackberry 8520 Curve. I’m kind of in two minds about that, since the touchpad on the latest Curve is brilliant, but… well, I just miss the trackball. As for the rest of the phone, from the front it’s broadly similar to its predecessor, with that patented SureType sort-of-quasi-QWERTY-only-not keypad, that wowed people who got the first Pearl. And from the back, the shell’s been redesigned, to really drive home the point that is the candybar sibling to the Blackberry Storm 2. Same lines, same metal stripe running round the sides and the back, and more or less the same battery cover (albeit a bit smaller).
All in all, then, it’s looking rather promising. I always had a bit of a soft spot for the original Pearl, and although I never would’ve bought one myself (no touchscreen, y’see, and I’m a touchscreen addict), I always used to look at it, and think, “Now that’s a nice looking phone.”
There’s no word on release date or prices, yet, but I can’t wait to give the Pearl 9100 a try…
More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!