- $448 to $548 (with 2-year mobile voice subscription and 1-year BlackBerry data plan with StarHub)
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Even before users could get enough of the beautiful Pearl, yet another BlackBerry has hit town. The 8800 retains many of the drool-worthy design elements found in the Pearl, such as its sleek black suit accented by chrome bits and the distinctive pearl-like trackball.

But even so, the 8800 does not look all that similar to the Pearl. What makes the 8800 stand out is its Qwerty keyboard design, which is more spacious compared with the Pearl's tiny Suretype keypad. As such, the 8800 is also much wider than the Pearl, bringing its size closer to traditional BlackBerry models and somewhat making the phone awkward to hold during calls.

But the 8800 compensates by being slimmer at 14mm, compared with the Pearl's 14.5mm. In fact, this is the slimmest BlackBerry to date.

The 8800 completes its look on the front of the phone with a bright and vibrant screen. Yet another thoughtful feature found on the 8800 is an integrated global positioning (GPS) chip with preloaded BlackBerry Maps to help you navigate your way around.

However, the quad-band GSM/GPRS and Edge-enabled 8800 lacks 3G/3.5G and Wi-Fi support. So, surfing speeds felt unbearably slow, especially since I have grown accustomed to 3.5G speeds.

The 8800 also does not come with a camera, but has 64MB worth of built-in memory and a microSD slot.

As with other BlackBerry models, the 8800 comes with BlackBerry Internet Service and Enterprise Server support for real time e-mail delivery.

I found the 8800's large keyboard user- friendly. The keys are contoured at the top so that helps in typing. The four-way trackball is also easy to use.

Its GPS receiver picked up signals quickly most of the time, but map details were lacklustre when compared against other brands like MapKing as buildings were not shown on the map.

The 'Directions' feature, which is supposed to guide you to your destination, did not work. Research In Motion (RIM), BlackBerry's manufacturer, says that it is working to add this feature and will provide a service upgrade.

The MP3 player supports a host of audio formats, including the common MP3 and AAC files and plays MPEG-4 and H263 videos too.

Voice quality was generally good. Music sounded good over the speaker, but voice calls came across slightly muffled.

FINAL SAY

This stylish BlackBerry will keep the road warrior happy and make him look good too.