Yummy or Crummy?

Lucretia’s old phone was getting REALLY crappy — some buttons stopped working, and the battery wasn’t charging well. It was time to switch, which meant that we could finally look outside of Cingular. After doing some research, we settled on T-Mobile since their selection of phones was decent, plus she was really set on getting a PEBL.

I probably could have kept my SonyEricsson S710a, which I really liked. But the battery on that was dying as well, so I decided to take this opportunity to switch to something else. I think in general, SonyEricsson has the best phones. Nice, satisfying industrial design, better-than-average UI, and great features. It’s just that North American carriers don’t sell any of their good phones, and you end up paying a lot if you want an unlocked one. As expected, T-Mobile didn’t have any SE phones that I wanted, so I chose the next best thing — the relatively recently released BlackBerry Pearl.

My first impression is that it’s slick. Shiny and slippery — but not in a bad way. The buttons are small, but with a stick phone you deal with it. The back cover on mine comes off a bit too easily, although I talked to a friend who has one and his is too tight. Go figure.

The namesake feature — the “pearl” trackball in the middle is easy to use, and it’s pretty good for scrolling down a long list, which the BlackBerry UI has many of. I’m afraid of wearing it out with constant use. If the trackball breaks, I guess I can use the keypad as the directional pad (which I just discovered) — but that’s no fun at all.

So I’m assigning both “Yummy” and “Crummy” to this post — because there are some things I like about the Pearl, and there are some things I definitely don’t like.

Yummy

• Email — I hooked up my personal and work emails, and they come in with no problem (I had to play with the work email a bit, but it didn’t take very long). I realize I’m not away from a computer all that much, but it’s still nice to be able to read quick emails when I’m sitting on the couch or whatever. Plus it’s great when you are actually away.
• Camera — has a flash. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
• Browser — I haven’t played with the settings, but it looks like I can tweak it to make the pages look more like they do in real browsers. I got T-Mobile’s unlimited internet access, which seems to work in most places that I would go, and the speed is not bad for a phone.
• Address book — can handle many fields. It even kept the notes field from my Mac address book.

Crummy

• Camera — no video! WTF?
• Bluetooth — doesn’t seem to be able to receive anything. It can send, though. This may be due to some settings I don’t know about, but it should work out of the box.
• Browser — can’t display Flash. No YouTube on the go for me.
• Email — can’t handle attachments other than images. I sent myself an MP3, but no go. Do I need to install something? It’s not clear. UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I have opened a .doc attachment on BB. Haven’t been able to open a large PDF, and still no luck with MP3. To clarify, MP3 plays on the phone, if you manage to put it in the right folder. I just can’t get the phone to recognize the file in email attachment.
• Clock/calendar — when I flew to Chicago for Christmas, the phone detected that the network’s timezone changed. But the phone’s clock wouldn’t automatically change! According to this messageboard found by another friend, it’s so that your calendar doesn’t get messed up. Dumb!

Overall, I must say I miss my S710a in a lot of ways. I would consider switching back if the battery on it wasn’t so dead and the email didn’t work so well on the Pearl. But the emails keep popping in no problem, and now I can see why people get addicted to it. Any free moment I have, I reach in my pocket and start playing. I really should do my homework and read up on how everything works and maybe download/install some add-ons — so my impression may change over time after I take the full advantage of all of its features. I just hope SE phones will have penetrated the market better by the time I consider switching to a new phone after this one!