The Phone Arena just got their hands on leaked images of the upcoming BlackBerry Pearl. The new BlackBerry is undoubtedly a Pearl –complete with the half-QWERTY keyboard, the front button layout and the simple, streamlined form live up to the series standards.
New to this model is the inclusion of the BlackBerry Track Pad which is seen with the Curve and the Bold 9700. No surprise here, despite the definitive success of the track ball used in older Pearls and BlackBerry phones in general, the track ball was prone to damage, overuse and loads of lint (no kidding). The new track pad is just as accurate as the track ball, but has a much smoother feel and has less stress on the finger thanks to the lack of pressing involved. Of course, the pad does not suffer from any lint problems.
The Pearl keyboard is what you could call a ‘half-QWERTY’ keyboard due to the fact that two keys share on button. “Q” and “W” share one button, “E” and “R” share one button and so forth. It’s a little tricky when you want to type fast, particularly if you are new to the device, but overall, it does not take long to get used to this phone. Though the Curve and Bold 9700 offer a much pleasant typing experience, getting used to Pearl 9100’s pad is not so bad.
This little 3G phone is a lot thinner than its full keyboard cousins and will easily slide into the thinner pouches that just hate other BlackBerry models. Aside from that, the Pearl 9100 packs your usual 3G needs. It has WiFi, a micro USB slot for transferring data, FM radio and of course, a built in camera. No confirmation yet on the exact specifics of the camera, but it is known that it will have LED flash (as seen in the images).
Tags: BlackBerry-Pearl-9100