RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Smartphone

First off this is a long term use review. I could bore you with all the technical details and specifications, but hey, you ve shown you can use a search engine if you found this in the first place and there s already hundreds of Blackberry Pearl 8100 reviews written within days of launch, stuffed with information about what it does.
But chances are, if you re interested in buying a Blackberry, you ll be wanting to know if once the shiny gadget honeymoon fades, does the love remain?
Short answer is yes but with some caveats.
The first good impressions of the Blackberry don t change or fade over time. In fact, once the novelty of playing with a new phone has worn off, many of them seem more important with use.
The size is a good example of this. Compared to the older, or more expensive Blackberry s, and many other PDAs, the 8100 is sleek and slim. It s no bigger than an average mobile phone in fact, it s probably slimmer than many, especially those with similar features. With use, you ll appreciate the fact it slides so easily into a pocket, isn t a weighty brick in your jacket and doesn t give your hand cramps as you try to hold it to your ear for long periods.
I d say I m comfortable with technology, but far from a gadget geek. From my perspective, the Pearl was relatively intuitive to use and easy to learn how to do everything I wanted. Within a few weeks I was confident I knew how to do just about everything on the phone and as time has gone by, I ve not had any surprises or had to turn back to the manual.
The navigation pearl is fantastically easy to use (and slightly addictive to fiddle with) and makes light work of skimming through menus, email lists and long documents.
However, with long term use it s proved to be a bit of an Achilles heel for my Blackberry collecting dust and fluff and refusing to work on just about a monthly basis. Usually the problem is solved with some aggressive rolling, or with a lightly moistened tissue used to wipe the exposed part of the roller-ball. There is always a concern that every time it gets stuck, it will be the time it sticks for good.
And once the ball is stuck, it s difficult to navigate your way round the device there seemingly being no back up technique for selecting from menus and moving your way through email.
Like the rollerball, the keyboard is intuitive and easy to use. Initial fears that fat finger syndrome will make a mess of the relatively small keyboard size proved unfounded, and continue to do so. Short email entry is pretty quick, especially with a fairly robust predictive text option which seems to learn and behave itself better as time goes by unlike my Sony Ericsson which gets more eccentric and multi-lingual the longer I ve used it.
If you re hoping to compose lengthy emails, you might eventually find the smaller keyboard is not for you and one of the larger format Blackberrys, a mini-laptop or something like the Nokia N94 with the optional keyboard might be more suited to you. For everything else, from short text messages to average email replies on the hoof, it does the job.
The phone, keyboard and pearl also seem to have stood up to 18 months of hard use better than many phones I ve experienced. I m not careful with technology, I don t cosset it in soft and expensive cocoons or cases.
Despite rattling round in numerous pockets, battered by keys and change, my Blackberry is relatively unscratched - importantly the screen is still clear and bright. Some wear and tear is evident particularly on the shiny side flashings and the pointless self-portrait mirror just below the camera lens on the rear of the unit.
There are a few dust and dirt traps on the Blackberry, including the lanyard attachment point, the camera lens recess and the USB port, which would benefit from better design or some sort of rubber cover but unless you re obsessive about cleanliness, it s not a deal breaker.
Build quality is also good. It s been dropped several times from a height of about three foot (my habit of stashing it in my top shirt pocket, and then bending over to tie my laces) and is still going strong. A major annoyance is the poor design of the battery cover, which slides off the phone at regular intervals while in a pocket, or even when you re handling it to make a call or write an email. A simple locking mechanism would have been a quick and simple solution.
Speaking of the battery, it has also stood up to 18 months of more-or-less continual use and numerous recharge cycles, with no sign of fading. Battery life is excellent on the 8100 and continues to be so, even this far into the battery s life.
18 months in I m perfectly happy with the 8100. It s not perfect, but it s pretty close and despite a few niggles, does everything it promises extremely well, and does everything a lot of much larger devices do, without taking up the same pocket space.
Granted, there are more fashionable PDAs out there, which look prettier and probably are stuffed with lots of extra features.
But when it comes down to it, once you've stopped stroking the shiny case and finding features you'll never use again - how useful and long-lived will it be (and how long WILL it stay shiny).
The Blackberry Peral migth be almost two-years old and it might not be the latest and sexiest gizmo on the market. But it's proven, the internet isn't full of people suffering technical problems, it keeps its looks and it continues to do the job, day in, day out.