02. 12. 2008
Smart and pretty - Pink BlackBerry Pearl 8130
The ad for the new BlackBerry Pearl asks "Are you confident enough to wear pink?" Funny, that's how I've always felt about my pink-hued gadgets - I don't need to have industrial looking (read: black) technology to be taken seriously. I want functionality and style, thank you very much.
I decorated my first BlackBerry with jewel-like rhinestones, and you can be sure no one in the AOL meetings accidentally picked mine up. Much later I graduated to the Curve, a wonderful machine, that I kept holstered in a classic pink leather holder.
But it wasn't until the introduction of the Pearl, its smaller size and "lifestyle" features like television, music players, cameras and Facebook social-networking software that the BlackBerry appealed to a broader audience. Up to this point, my daughter Mackenzie had turned up her nose at my BlackBerry, which didn't pass the most important test for a teenager, which seems to be the ability to put a gadget in the pocket of their jeans. When she saw my spiffy review unit of the Pearl, she had to have it.
Now they've improved on the basic model with the 8130, which is a lovely metallic blush, and features an improved camera (2.0 megapixels), video capabilities, full email and web browsing, a music player (player reads MP3, WMA, and AAC files and displays album art), Bluetooth, AND an expandable memory (up to 8GB.) Like it's predecessor, it features SureType QWERTY keyboard technology - which you either love or hate. (My daughter is a wiz at typing on it, so there you go.)
By far the most advanced feature is the VZ Navigator, the navigation system on this smartphone which provides heads-up, voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions (with "auto-rerouting" if you miss a turn), local search of nearly fourteen million points of interest (POIs) in the U.S., and detailed color maps that can be quickly panned and zoomed.
Side-by-side with my daughter's 8100 model, the new Pink Pearl 8130 - which is only available at Verizon - is considerably faster since it uses broadband 3G data speeds over EV-DO, which is sadly not available on the AT&T or the T-Mobile models. Darn.
You can purchase the Pearl at Verizon for $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and Valentine's Day IS coming up, if you need an excuse.
Posted by Evan
Category:
cell phones
| feature
Tags: blackberry pink
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