Blackberry has perhaps strayed from their winning formula of producing outstanding handsets for use in business. There have been some useful added extras when compared to other Blackberry’s, yet this phone still lacks some important features.

The Trackball that has replaced the thumb wheel is a good innovation, making the phone a delight to use; this is complimented by the Blackberry interface that is also clear and easy to use. The display is a 65K colour screen, and has technology that allows the phone to adjust the background to the ambient lighting, i.e. whether the user is indoors or outdoors. The keypad on the Pearl 8100 is unusual, it is not a conventional mobile phone handset, nor is it a full QWERTY keyboard, Blackberry have included a 20 key style, in the form of a QWERTY keyboard, which perhaps isn’t quite as easy to use for texts and emails but it allows the Blackberry Pearl 8100 to be very small.

Weighing just 88g and measuring just 107 x 50 x 14.5 mm, this makes it one of the smallest Blackberry Smartphone’s. This is even more remarkable considering the Pearl 8100 has an incorporated 1.3 megapixel camera, and a media player that supports MP3, MIDI, AMR NB, AAC, AAC+ & eAAC+ formats, which can only help to widen Blackberry’s consumer base.

Other features include Bluetooth technology, Quad band, GPRS, EDGE technology, a HTML web browser, a document viewer (PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and an included 64Mb microSD card and a larger memory card can be purchased.

However, some negative aspects of the Pearl 8100 are that it does not have 3G technology, the screen is a little bit too small for reading larger emails, and the SureType keyboard takes a little getting used to.