After two years of using the Blackberry 8700 I decided last week to switch to the Blackberry Pearl. Of course I had a little incentive from my wireless provider Rogers. I was eligible for an upgrade, it seems you can now upgrade every year. Anyway with the instant rebate and special promo discount and confirmation of extending my plan I was only charged $75 for the upgrade. I bought the 8700 outright a few years back so I don't have to return it, so I suppose I'll sell it on eBay.
After 1 day of use with the Pearl I am impressed so far. It weighs half as much as the 8700 and has some added functionality such as a camera, mp3 and video player. But how does it perform compared to the 8700?
The most important features to me are the quality of the voice calls, email access, and web browsing. In all areas the Pearl shines. Voice quality is what I expected and the Motorola bluetooth headset I have works great and was easy to setup. Email on the Blackberry is rock solid, I access several of my accounts using the Blackberry service and I installed Google's mobile Gmail. I should also note you can access Gmail by following the instructions in the above link or by downloading the Gmail application at http://gmail.com/app. I thought using the smaller keypad would be difficult but I adjusted quickly and typing wasn't bad. With a little more experience I don't think I'll miss the larger keyboard of the 8700.
Web browsing was great, I tried my service, SpaceRef Mobile, and it works great.
One of the best features on the phone is the trackball. Scrolling though the menus was a breeze. I'm a Mac guy and the announcement last month's of Apple iPhone might have excited me more but reality is it won't be available until the summer in the US and who knows when in Canada. And on the downside it's big and heavy. I want something lightweight and fully featured. I think I've found that in the Pearl