BlackBerry Pearl
Easily one of the coolest gadgets I got this year was the Blackberry Pearl (or 8100 model). I’ve been playing with it for like a day now and I know it’s going to be something really special to use for a good long while. Although it’s a nice site, the images really don’t do it much justice. It’s honestly a thing of beauty in design if you have it infront of you. It’s only slightly larger than my previous Ericsson and packs a serious punch with respect to the number of features it’s got in it.
The only annoying thing I found was the flap you put the SIM card in doesn’t stay set, but opens until you put the battery in there. Minor annoyance but it’s a real shame as this could have scored some more points of rock solid construction. Another thing that is really starting to PISS me off, is the fact that none of these phone manufacturers have clocked onto the fact that it would be nice to have a normal earphone jack as opposed to some piece of shit they’ve concocted for you to plug in your earphones.
The Future was Orange
I’ve been with Orange for the last year and a half. The best part of being with Orange wasn’t the coverage (which is shit where I live) or the price package (which was shit once again but I’ll get to that in a minute) but rather the one little perk of having 2 for 1 cinema tickets on a Wednesday. Of course, based on my previous post, I’ve not been doing that very often either, which means that this little perk, wasn’t all that much of a perk as far as I’m concerned, so I didn’t need much convincing to drop them as my network of choice.What’s interesting is that I was able to get the phone and a whole new package that suits me down to a T while paying less. The issue with a lot of these packages that many operators provide is that they’re honestly not tailored very well for the average user. They either give you an immense amount of time in “off-peak” hours that are not always useful, so you end up not using all of them, or they give you too little minutes during normal times. The good thing however is that after a year and a bit of using my phone regularly I’ve got enough bills to know exactly how much a use and of what. No need to guess these things (as I’ve had to in the past).
Enter the T
hmm got to check how much that costs on the internet to see if it’s cheaper.In the end T-mobile based on their Flext system which effectively gives you a pot of money every month that you can use for either calls or texts all from the same pot. Obviously I’ve opted for the unlimited internet service on there which is brilliant to be surfing the web while waiting on the train platform or even walking to and from places. You know when you’re in any store and you think to yourself:
Well now it’s just a few clicks to check the net there and then.
Opera Mini
So I’ll be talking about things/software/tips and tricks/links that I find out for the Pearl as I go along. Hopefully other people can benefit from my experiences. The first software tip I’ll throw everyone’s way is the Opera Mini browser.Seems that Opera is definitely the little browser that could. Seems that this little browser is a hit on the Nintendo market. I’ve got to say that Opera Mini (opera for mobile devices) is MILES better than the standard BlackBerry browser. For a start they’ve cut away a lot of the clutter that the BB browser has when the menu is pressed. People on that size of screen don’t want to scroll FOREVER. We want something quick and to the point. Sure the browser is being updated pretty regularly as far as I can tell. It’s got RSS integration which is essential for all mobile devices as far as I’m concerned.
The Home page is EXACTLY what you want to see when you first log into the browser. Oh sure I’m as self obsessed as the next guy, but having BK as my home page on my BB seems a bit of a waste of space, although it’s definitely interesting to see how the site renders on a mobile phone (I’ll be sorting out a seperate mobile spreadsheet in the not too distant future).
The Application Opera Mini has attempted to access the network. Would you like to allow this?The only annoying thing for me at the moment (which I’m not sure if it’s got something to do with the actual browser or t-mobile’s settings) but effectively every time you use Opera it asks you:
If anyone’s got a way of stopping this fekking annoying message coming up everytime Opera is used please, pretty please with a cherry on top drop something in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.
For those in the T-mobile camp wondering how to sort this out onto your Pearl, here’s the steps I took:- From your Pearl go to http://mini.opera.com and follow the instructions.
- Chance are after you’ve tried to connect it’ll fail on your ass (it did on mine). Thankfully Opera have already forseen this problem and posted this page. Note that this is for the UK market, although as you can see they’ve sorted everyone out for the rest of the world as well.
- Go to Options > Advanced Options > TCP and then put the information you got from that page. Turn off, remove battery, turn on and it should all work.
I agree with you on all points except the door for the sim as well as the door for the sandisk mini card. Both those doors lock as long as one looks at the printing on them and moves them up or down in the direction indicated to lock them. I have had no problems locking my sim and suspect there shall be none when I must lock the one or two gig memory card (once I purchase it. Two gigs can be supported if tethered correctly…)
All in all a great review.
↓ Quote | 5/1/2007
I’m about to get a 2 gig card as well, so I might be loosing my ipod in the near future. I’m a bit surprised that I can’t find much software for the phone to be honest. Opera and the gmail application are all very very cool indeed, however I would really love to have a few more things, like a complete rss feed reader (not just within opera but one where I have more control over my feeds.
Is there any IRC clients for the Pearl?
↓ Quote | 7/1/2007
Thanks for your post on Opera Mini, been unable to get this working on my Pearl until I read this
↓ Quote | 3/2/2007
Matt, that’s why I wrote it down, since I couldn’t find this information elsewhere in a step by step format.
↓ Quote | 4/2/2007
Yeah, that Pearl’s a pretty nice device; how are you liking the SureType keypad though? It definitely was a lot smaller than I expected when I first held it/saw it firsthand.
As for the Opera permission, I don’t have a Pearl with me right now, but on my K790, if you browse to the Opera Mini application, access the more menu (options menu), there should be a ‘Permissions’ option. From there, you should be able to deny access, set it to ask once or always allow. T-Mobile may restrict some of those settings though. I know Rogers here in Canada sometimes disables the always allow network access for many network applications because they get complaints from users who ‘didn’t realize it used data cause there was no warning prompt’.
↓ Quote | 5/2/2007
I have a question, concerning blackberry maps. Is there anyway to have maps on the blackberry pearl without using the browser? I have the regular plan with t-mobile that does not include internet. Are there any kinds of maps for blackberry pearl that could be downloaded and than installed on the device?
-Daniel
↓ Quote | 7/3/2007
Daniel, the ever EXCELLENT, Google maps , easily the second best application to download for a mobile device.
↓ Quote | 7/3/2007