RIM Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220

It might seem slightly perverse for RIM to produce a clamshell Blackberry when almost every other phone maker's attitude seems to be ‘been there, done that’ while they focus on sliders and candybars. But there is method in the madness. RIM’s intention with the Pearl range has been to broaden the appeal of the Blackberry beyond …

[Craster]

Front screen timeout

No comment on the fact that the small screen on the front of the device times out after a couple of minutes, rendering it totally useless? Nothing about the appalling plastic-y build quality?

[Thomas Jolliffe]

Great looking?

Very subjective. I mean, it looks OK, but it's no design icon. No-one's going to buy that for its looks over other options on the market.

[dan]

gps?

Regarding the GPS piece of the review... the 500m reference and Google Maps leads me to believe it was using the "my location" feature to identify your location based on the connected cell tower.

Could you confirm whether you were actually looking at the GPS location? I have noticed that when using Google Maps on a GPS enabled blackberry that you actually need to authorize use of the GPS to use it.

[Bad Beaver]

Why?

Why would one still buy a Blackberry, especially such a bland, cheap looking one, when so many nice mobiles offer you to use BB push AND pop/imap according to your preference?

[Anonymous Coward]

@Bad Beaver

Same reason people buy iPhones. Because chosing something you like often takes priority over "What is best".

[Christian Berger]

Blackberry bug?

Do Blackberries still have the bug where you cannot do IMAP or POP3 directly, but have to use a special Blackberry server to do all your e-mail over?

[Matt Robinson]

Your words of power need recharging

Writing "stylish and sophisticated" under a picture of a bizarre, ugly lump does not make it stylish or sophisticated. Look at it, it's awful. That first photo is supposed to show it in its best light. Imagine how bad it looks in normal use away from the unnatural all-white Matrix Construct where Apple ads are shot. The case has the unalluring sheen of cheap brittle plastic, the screen is myopic, and the keypad looks like an insult. Overall, the design takes its cues from the early 90s, a time better known as "Hammer time", which does it no favours. It is a dull, bland and unadventurous phone, and simply calling it stylish won't ever make it so. Only the yuppies of yesteryear would find anything appealing about it, but perhaps in aiming for now-middle-aged ex yuppies, it will succeed wildly.