BlackBerry Pearl 8110

Available now
29th February 2008

Since the launch of the original BlackBerry Pearl 8100, RIM have tweaked the specification a few times and have come out with some variants, including the WiFi capable 8120 and CDMA 8130.

The new Pearl 8110 is based on the recent Pearl 8120, but instead of having WiFi, the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 substitutes a GPS receiver and a mapping application.

Just in case you are not familiar with the BlackBerry Pearl, the current generation has a 240 x 260 pixel display, 2 megapixel camera, microSD expandable memory and quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE data, plus Bluetooth, a document viewer and a multimedia player.

The Pearl is a bit of an acquired taste, even for die-hard BlackBerry users. The hybrid keyboard can be annoying for those who like a traditional QWERTY arrangement, the trackball control can be fiddly to use at first, and no matter how good the SatNav application is in the 8110, you can guarantee that it won't be as easy to use as a TomTom. Still, despite our misgivings, the Pearl is a very sought after device in businesses, so it must be doing something right.

The BlackBerry 8110 is available on Vodafone in the UK and Spain, SFR in France, Rogers Wireless in Canada, O2 in the UK, KPN in the Netherlands, Vodacom in South Africa, plus several other carriers in other countries.