What a Pearl: the Blackberry Red Pearl is a Gem

The Blackberry Red Pearl is here, and it's a showstopper! What's not to love about this device?

If you've hesitated to get a Blackberry because they were too big and bulky for your taste, hesitate no more! The new Blackberry Red Pearl looks more like a cellphone than earlier Blackberry models, and is jazzier in styling with its bold, flashy red color.No more dark, clunky, units. This Pearl is ready for fun! It's also very small and very light (under 4 ounces in weight.) In fact, it's hard to see how so many features ever got packed in such a small package.

How did they do it? The main feature that allows this Blackberry to be so tiny is the keyboard made possible by the very innovative SureType technology. This technology allows each key on the keyboard to hold two letters. The Red Pearl automatically guesses which letter you want by figuring out whatit is you mean to type. How cool is that? It also remembers words you use most often, thus increasing your typing speed considerably (and possibly helping stop the ruin of the language by text abbreviations.)

The 240X260 screen supports over 65,000 colors, so that your web browsing and email reading is just as colorful as on your computer at home.

On the back, there's a 1.3 megapixel camera, with another fun new feature: a self-portrait mirror so you can take pictures of yourself. Just the thing for the narcissist in us all. And so handy for posting pictures on MySpace or Facebook!

All the calling features everyone has grown to know and love are available on the Red Pearl. You can use it without a headset with the speakerphone feature, or use a wireless headset with the built-in Bluetooth technology. The phone has 32 included ringtones, any of which can be used to create unique caller ids so that you know who's calling before you pick up the phone. if you're too lazy or too busy to dial the phone,or your hands are full, Red Pearl also allows you to call your contacts by just saying their name with the "speaker independent" voice dialing feature.

The Blackberry name was built on email, and, naturally, since this is a Blackberry, you can still receive email instantaneously through Cingular and get instant alerts from up to 10 email accounts. You can even view email attachments! You can also use wireless messaging and instant messaging. And you can browse the web and get up to date weather, news, stock quotes, and more, all from the palm of your hand. And Cingular/AT&T's EDGE highspeed data network means it's fast!

You gotta have your music, right? The Red Pearl's music player plays your MP3's and accepts several other formats. It is compatible with game downloads from Cingular/AT&T, too, as well as Java applications, so as long as you've got your Red Pearl along you've always got something to do.

All this in a unit that weights less than 4 ounces and is less than 5 inches long!

Looking around the Internet, the only complaint I've really been able to find is that the headset that comes with the Red Pearl is not very good. Hey, I can live with that.

Now, if someone would just teach this thing to cook...

I'm sure that's coming next!

Verdict: Smooth, beautiful, easy to use: I can't think of a better communication device than this one. And, as a long-time Cingular/new AT&T customer who has never had a problem, I'm ready for it!