Hot off the Presses: the Blackberry Pearl
After a lot of hype, speculation, leaks, etc., Research in Motion's Blackberry Pearl has finally been released into the wild, highlighted by an ahead-of-the-pack positive view by the Wall St. Journal's Walter Mossberg. For some early thoughts about the Pearl, which features push e-mail, a camera, video and music players, check out Engadget, CrunchGear and Gizmodo. RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie describes the Pearl as the mobile “Trifecta” because it's 100% cool, sleek and elegant, 100% Blackberry and 100% feature-rich. The only thing that might keep the Pearl from being the perfect smart phone is the SureType keyboard. The New York Times' David Pogue has a lengthy story on the Pearl in which he says “the Pearl is a pearl”. Now, let's see if all this praise translates into sales.
Update: Here's my story on the Pearl in Friday's Financial Post.
September 7th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
I understand the excitement as the BB is mvoing out of the business world and going mainstream, but a Suretype keyboard isn't a great thing. I have one, and tend to toss it against the wall often; as it messes up simple words like 'get' and 'hey' (they share the same keystrokes) among many others.
I will be waiting for a full keyboard version, or for the 8700 prices to drop before upgrading.
September 7th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Is there anything they've left???
It should be interesting to see what this bad boy can do with the GTalk integration and the recent partnership between Google & Skype
September 7th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
The New York Times also had an incredibly positive write-up that included a humorous video. You have to hand to RIM. If someone told you 10 years ago that a small Canadian company with two CEOs was going to become a leading producer of high-end mobile phones, you would have called them crazy. Of course I know that they would claim that they are not really handset vendor, but rather a platform and application leader … blah blah blah. But when I go to buy a handset, they are on my list of choices (and in fact my first choice), because I am not just seeking a hunk of plastic that can only really handle voice connections.
Anyway, I also agree with your other reader … Suretype is an impressive peice of technology, but after about a month of struggling with acronyms and people's names, I went for the 8700.
September 10th, 2006 at 10:32 am
This is a tiny, tiny, tiny point, but Pogue's New York Times review and Mossberg's Wall St Journal review appeared the same day. (Mossberg wasn't “ahead of the pack.”)
September 24th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
I played around with the NEWER version of Suretype and it was flawless. The Pearl is as close to perfect as you can get. The size, style and functionality are unbeatable. I've tried the Nokia, Q and have the 8700R. As soon as the Pearl is out I'll be handing this in. I never experienced a non-querty keyboard that is so accurate. The trick is to just type the word and by the time you finish it will be correct. I didn't test it with url's, contacts etc.but hope it will be a good experience.