A bite-sized smartphone – the Blackberry Pearl 3G
It seems everyone’s in the iPhone camp or the Blackberry camp in these halcyon days of smartphone wizardry, and anyone that resides out of the two camps can expect to be pitied, sniggered at behind closed doors and, ultimately, have sex less often. However, Blackberry’s new swanky new Pearl 3G seems to be their punt at grabbing these poor fools, these on-the-fence’ers and, while Blackberry purists might shrink from it and stick to their Bolds’ and their Curves’, it seems a good bet to these bloodshot eyes.
So come on, you shout. What’s the difference? What can they really do to change this mobile trailblazer? Well, it’s very simple. The pad. To those not in the know [snigger], Blackberry has a Qwerty keyboard. It’s amazing, game-changing; if your life is fairly vacuous and empty of love and creativity it may just change it. Once you have the Qwerty permanently at your fingertips, you realise the thought of pressing one,two,three times just to get to sodding F is a waste of time, of life; a commodity that Iggy Pop is paid a fat wedge to tell us is so precious. However, not everyone seems to think so as according to the press release ‘three quarters of the people in the global mobile phone network are still buying handsets with a traditional alphanumeric keypad.’ Introducing a keypad to try and tempt these luddites over to the Blackberry camp would therefore seem a fairly obvious move, if one that this Blackberry devotee sees as some antithetical to the point of the Blackberry in the first place. It’s all about taking your life, by extension your office, with you in the most natural way possible. Tapping three times to get that F is not natural. But then I’m not the target market.
It looks friendly, you can’t argue with that. Weighing in at only 3.3 ounces its never going to weigh you down and with its slimline, Nokia-esque shape its not as imposing as the traditional models. If the Curve is the Daddy Blackberry, this is the Teenage Daughter With An Older Boyfriend Blackberry. The phone’s industry promo also hints at this, kicking off with a long look through its abilities to store and play music. A pronounced move away from its traditional mobile office USP, its all a big attempt to make the Blackberry less staid, less serious, a little more (whisper it) iPhone. Even the dancing people in the promo is a blatant steal from those horribly chipper Apple ads.
It’s got all the normal features- 624 Mhz processor, 256MB Flash Memory, 3.2 Megapixel cameral, 360×400 sharp resolution, and its all presented in a slightly bigger, ostensibly more user-friendly desktop screen. Obviously it’ll synch with your social media, as well as Windows Media Player and iTunes. One major new feature that will be interesting to test is the new trackpad control, instead of the famous Blackberry trackerball. The trackerball is truly the gift and the curse; at first it makes scrolling and navigating the screen the smartphone control equivalent of Kerry Katona. Easy. But if that trackerball becomes wet or stuck! Woe betide your sorry, unconnected soul as you press, prod and spin that cruel vixen in the hope that it’ll come back to life and you’ll be able to make that vital Tweet. The trackpad will supposedly do away with this bane of the Blackberry user’s existence, though whether that’ll be at the expense of ease of movement will be the important thing.
All in all, the new Blackberry Pearl 3G seems like a win-win update. Longstanding Blackberry users will swerve it and stick with the models they like. Younger newbies will be sucked in by its unimposing looks, musical features and keypad. Either way, its clear them head bods know what they’re doing. Long live Blackberry.
