For as long as BlackBerry has been making mobile phones, it has been known for its rock solid e-mail and its basic candy bar design. Screen on top, keys below.
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Research In Motion Ltd has launched a flip version of its…The Pearl Flip is the first BlackBerry that folds up. It …The new flip BlackBerry Pearl will be available worldwide… View Larger Images
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But Research In Motion is shaking things up design-wise: It unveiled its first flip phone, the Pearl Flip 8220, this week at the CTIA cell phone show in San Francisco. It mimics many of the existing Pearl phones, but it throws in some nice touches in addition to the radically different design.
The phone sports a 240×320 display, only now it folds out. The keypad still uses BlackBerry’s Suretype system, which places two letters per key. But the buttons are more spacious and feel easier to use than those on earlier Pearls.
The track ball is more recessed on the Pearl Flip, which gives it a little better feel as you move around the menu. And speaking of the menu, the Pearl Flip has a home screen that features five action icons along the bottom that you can program, similar to what will be on the upcoming BlackBerry Bold. A touch of the BlackBerry button brings up the familiar menu packed with icons.
One of the nice touches is that the external screen displays incoming e-mails with a brief snippet of the message so you don’t have to open the phone to know what the e-mail is about. The front of the phone is jet black and looks like it will attract its fair share of fingerprints.
The quad-band phone (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) is set to be released through T-Mobile, though price and availability have not been set yet.
Some wonder if BlackBerry is taking a risk with this design. I don’t know why this would sell much worse than other Pearls. A lot of Pearl customers are new to RIM anyway, so they’re not wedded to any design. So you give them a different design but keep the same BlackBerry experience. It provides that much more choice, and that should continue RIM’s success story as it reaches out to more consumers.
