Blackberry Pearl Hands On

The Blackberry Pearl is the latest handheld device from RIM. This device has been cut clean — it is smaller than most fashion phones, lighter than the rest and it comes with a few new features which truly makes the Blackberry an attractive lifestyle device. The stigma of the Blackberry was that it was labeled as a “corporate device” because of its bulky design and the no-camera feature.

The Pearl has the following highlights:

* 1.3MP camera
* 1 1/2 days worth of battery life
* Built in GMail Chat and Yahoo! Messenger
* Voice recognition dialing (you do not need to pre-program recordings)
* Video playback
* EDGE connectivity
* Light sensor (detects low light levels and switches on the backlighting)
* Trackball navigation (a small trackball at the center serves as the navigation, replacing the joystick)

With the addition of a camera, enterprise IT departments can actually have the camera feature disabled from their servers for security purposes. Cool!