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RIM BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 – black (T-Mobile) Smartphone Review

We Like:
Once again BlackBerry has made a great email savvy smartphone. This one has vibrant internal screen and the interface has been given a facelift. Email support remains strong just like other RIM mobile devices. They have also added “Documents to Go” for better document management. And lets not forget about WiFi, BlueTooth and a decent 2 megapixel camera.

We Didn’t Like:
The double letters on the SureType keyboard take sometime to get used to. The Pearl Flip edition doesn’t come with either GPS or 3G support which some users will really miss.

Overall:
For flip phone lovers the BlackBerry Pearl Flip is a really solid choice. It has most of the sought after features on smartphones and convenient flip phone design which makes the package nice and compact.

BlackBerry wanted to make a splash with by releasing the Pearl Flip. It is the first Research in Motion mobile device that is made with a flip design. RIM wanted to include a phone like this in their lineup since their studies showed that some 70% of cell phone users currently have flip phone of some sort. Maybe it is not the flashiest flip phone on the market but it sure is handy. It is packed with features that more than make up for somewhat plain design. There is the new operating system, 2 megapixel camera, document editing software, WiFi and BlackBerry’s solid email support. If you are a heavy business user you should probably look towards the more powerful RIM devices like BlackBerry Bold or Storm for your daily routines but for the causal user or those getting their feet wet with smartphones this is a great mobile phone choice. It is available in either red or black colors.

Design:
The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8820 is RIM’s first attempt to produce a clamshell phone and in that regard it has done a wonderful job.

When the clamshell is closed the phone is quite compact measuring only 3.9 inches high by 1.9 inches wide by 0.7 inch deep and weighs 3.6 ounces. This may not make it the smallest clamshell phone on the market but it certainly isn’t big either. The Pearl Flip will fit nicely into your pocket or purse. Holding the phone in your hand feels quite nice and natural. Its tall design will make it easy to place near your ear during phone calls with only the drop hinge on the Flip causing the bottom half to hit your cheek.


The external displays all the standard information as well as missed calls, new messages, and track information.


The front face of the phone gives you a 1.6 inch diagonal display. While not a touchscreen it does display over 65,000 colors and has a 128×160 pixel resolution. This screen is mostly used as a quick informational display. It will show you battery life, network strength, time and date as well as notifications for new messages, missed calls, caller ID, voice mails amongst other things. While listening to music on the the media player the front screen will show you all relative track information available but not give you access to any playback controls other than volume. The screen will go completely dark after sometime to conserve battery life, touching any button will cause it to pop right back to life. Right above this front panel screen is the camera lens and flash locations.

Flipping open the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 is nice and smooth with a assuring snap sound upon open or close of the unit. There are some pretty clever design ideas in the way the clamshell operates. There is a style of hinge called a drop hinge that is used in this design. The drop hinge lets the phone sit more ergonomically, so if you look at the phone open in a side profile you will see it does not sit straight up and down. This makes it easier to use your thumb on the trackball and the rest of the keyboard.

The keyboard on the BlackBerry Pearl Flip is the same love it or hate it SureType keyboard found on the BlackBerry Pearl. Before we get into the keyboard itself lets take a look right above it to the navigation controls. They are also the same ones as on the BlackBerry Pearl with Talk and End keys, a BlackBerry menu shortcut, a back button, and trackball navigator. As far as the SureType aspect of the keyboard goes if you haven’t used the predictive typing before it will take some getting used to. SureType uses two letter on each key and the uses technology to predict which letter you are after based on what you are typing. While this is good for the most part you do have to keep an eye on it and sometimes select from a list of available words which great slows down heavy messagers and texters.

Like the RIM BlackBerry Pearl, the Pearl Flip features a SureType keyboard and trackball navigator.


When the clamshell is open on the BlackBerry Pearl Flip the screen is a generous 2.25 inches diagonally. The screen also boasts 65,000 colors and 240×320pixels resolution. This makes all the images, graphics and text pop right off the screen in vibrant colors and sharp edges. Making things look even better is the fact that the whole interface has been given a facelift including new icons. Just like other RIM mobile devices you can easily change the look and feel of your home screen including background images, themes and font types and sizes.

Back out side the phone to the left spine, is the essentials like a mute button, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a micro USB port, and a customizable convenience key. Hopping over on the right side of the Blackberry Pearl Flip, you have your volume keys, a microSD expansion slot, and another customizable shortcut key.

Included in the sales package from RIM for the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8820 is an AC adapter, a USB cable, a wired headset, a software CD, and reference material.

Features:

When launched the BlackBerry Flip was running the BlackBerry OS 4.6 which gave it a step up on other BlackBerries but that has now been solved as all BlackBerry devices have been updated with a new version of the operating system. The new interface makes the phone much easier to use than previous BlackBerry phones and makes it look a lot sharper too.

Email and messaging:
A staple of the BlackBerry functionality has always been email and the Flip is no different. The BlackBerry Pearl Flip has the usual strong email support that gives you acces to email via BlackBerry Enterprise server, with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise. This lets you manage upto 10 email accounts whether POP3 or IMAP4 business and personal accounts. There is also a handy wizard that takes you through the steps necessary to get you email connected in a hurry. The Pearl Flip also has handful of instant messaging clients available for use like BlackBerry Messenger, AOL, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo, and Windows Live to keep you really connected. Since email is so vital to the BlackBerry Pearl there is also strong support for common document types. You can open Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF and more. Going beyond just viewing is the “Documents to Go” application that lets you edit many of these common office document types.

Voice Features:
The same voice voice features found on the other BlackBerry Pearl are in play here too. There is quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, conference calling, speed dial, and text and multimedia messaging. The phone book will keep you organized as it is only limited by available memory and you can store as much information on each contact as you need. You can hold multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses, work and home addresses, job title. Caller ID gets fun also as you can use ringtones, and photos for each contact or create groups and put contacts together.

WiFi and Internet:
The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8820 comes with a WiFi connection that lets you hop onto any wireless network and surf the web. The WiFi connection is really easy to use and connect to the Internet with it. Once connected the web browsing is easy with the new web browser that is included on the phone. The browser now has full HTML capabilities and can even surf to and watch YouTube videos which is quite nice. The browser uses the trackball as a mouse pointer on a regular computer making for easy and handy navigation of web pages. If you can’t hop onto a WiFi connection you can always use the EDGE network for web browsing since the phone is not a 3G mobile phone.

On the right spine, there’s a microSD expansion slot than can accept up to 16GB cards.


Multimedia:
Keeping on with the fun aspects of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip we move on to the media player. The built in music player can handle all common music formats like MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI music files. You can also search for songs, make playlists, shuffle and repeat songs. For video playback there is support for MPEG4, WMV, and H.263 video clips. The same functionality applies to video as to the music playback in addition to the fact that videos playback in full-screen mode this time around which is nice to see. Another handy feature is the BlackBerry Media Sync that will load up your iTunes library to the Pearl Flip. Just be aware of where you are syncing to since the onboard flash is only 128mb so make sure to throw a big microSD card in the expansion slot before using this feature.

Camera:
Once again we are treated to a 2 megapixel camera with the BlackBerry Pearl Flip which is a big bonus for BlackBerry users. The 2 megapixel camera has a flash built in as well as 5x zoom and video recording capabilities. You can take photos in three different resolutions and qualities. Once you have taken a photo you have a plethora of options on what to do with the image. You can send your media via e-mail or multimedia message, set them as your background image, or upload it to Facebook. There are also some basic setting you can adjust to get a better photo like white balance. The image quality was OK for a camera phone but don’t replace that stand alone camera just yet with the BlackBerry Pearl.

The Pearl Flip’s 2-megapixel camera is located on the front of the phone and features a flash.


Performance:
When it came to voice calling the BlackBerry Pearl Flip did quite well in our tests. On our end the call clarity was good with minimal distortion and on the other end most of the people we called couldn’t even tell we were on a cell phone which was nice to hear. When using the speakerphone the quality was also OK but there was a bit of a hissing sound on our end. Using a BlueTooth headset gave the best overall voice calling quality and is highly recommended.

Using the various features of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip was quite easy with no noticeable lag. During all our testing everything was quite snappy and we had no operating system crashes either. Surfing the web was a breeze on WiFi and more clunky on the EDGE network. If you are a heavy Internet browser user than you may want to see out better browser phones but for sporadic use it does just fine. Listen to music on the loud speaker was OK but not great. There was some lacking bass beats but it was better than other speakerphones we have heard. Watching YouTube videos was easy to do and audio and video seemed to be synchronized but a bit pixelated.

Battery Life:
The rated talk time on the Pearl Flip 8220 is 4 hours or 14 days of standby time. During our testing we were able to get 7 hours on a battery drain test which was a nice surprise.