The mobile phone race continues, even as the mobile phone continues to find itself ingrained and integrated in various aspects of everyday life for people from all walks of life. Since making the leap from business-executive necessity – from where the phone merely had to make a call and eventually send short text messages – to hot personal items that have become central implements for communication as well as entertainment. What’s more, technology has enabled companies and providers to fully stock and load their new mobiles with various features and integrated hard the rise are to facilitate the expansion. And take advantage of this they have, as mobile phones continue to evolve into smartphones and beyond.
The BlackBerry range of phones has welcomed the latest model – ironically the somewhat dated-looking clamshell, the Pearl series 8220 has emerged as a mixed bag of features, all clocking in as a generally functional device. With a compact frame that has a camera and MP3 player under the hood, the Pearl 8220 is a solid entertainment device as well as an effective phone and personal data assistant with mobile email capability. While not making a lot of waves in the innovation department – the 8220 essentially follows in the footsteps of the 8100, 8110 and 8120 but with a clamshell-type frame – it nevertheless manages to provide the characteristic BlackBerry service and style.
While somewhat bulkier and heavier than your standard Pearl model due to its flip-to-open format, the 8220’s clamshell frame makes the experience worthwhile overall. With a smaller 128×160 external screen [already capable of displaying emails and text messages] and a larger internal screen capable of handling 240×320 pixels and 65000 colors, the Pearl 8220 manages to capably use its integrated camera and media player to provide a good visual experience for its users. While it doesn’t have a GPS receiver, it does render BlackBerry Maps capably as well.
The 8220 is equipped with a hot-swappable microSD card slot, as well as a half QWERTY Sure-type keypad and the standard Pearl trackball. The Sure-type system is BlackBerry’s attempt at streamlining the full-QWERTY keypad layout by having letters share the same key, and takes some getting used to for virtually any typing purpose. The interface when running the actual browsing is nothing new to BlackBerry faithful – just a little smaller – and the navigation is smooth and generally unproblematic. The phone is GPRS and EDGE capable if not 3G-compatible, and even has WiFI functionality, unlike many Pearl series units.
The 8220’s camera functionality is standard fare, with tweak settings that mainly include brightness and contrast balance and some color adjustment. The 8220’s main shortcoming, it would seem, has to do with video playback. While the unit can play back both Xvid and Divx formats, making it versatile and ideal for many users, the display does not appear to play in the landscape display setting, only running in a smaller area in the center of a portrait-orientation screen.
On the whole, the 8220 provides a middle-of-the-road experience, albeit with the same BlackBerry functionality and style in a chunkier and smaller-screened unit that at times doesn’t make the most of the hardware it has at its disposal.
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