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YOU are forgiven if you cannot tell the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 smartphone apart from the other two models in the Pearl series. They all look virtually identical.
The Pearl design must really be working for Research In Motion for them to continue using the same design in the latest addition to the series.
The main enhancement in the 8110 is under the hood: A built-in GPS receiver for satellite navigation. Apart from the first time when it took longer to get a signal lock, the GPS receiver works well and locks on to the satellite signals quickly.
You can use it to get driving directions which are displayed on a map and also as a series of turn-by-turn text directions. You can even e-mail or SMS the text directions to someone else directly from the 8110, which is a cool feature.
The map software is also easy and intuitive to use - switching between map zoom and scrolling mode is just a matter of clicking the trackball. Scrolling around the map is also a breeze using the multi-directional trackball.
For those who are not familiar with the BlackBerry Pearl series, the 8110 sports the SureType keyboard. It is a Qwerty-style keyboard but with fewer keys as each key is shared by two different characters.
While the keys are laid out like a Qwerty keyboard, keying in text is actually similar to T9 text input - the SureType technology intelligently guesses the word as you type with its large dictionary of over 35,000 words.
Typing on the 8110 definitely take some getting used to before you can become proficient in it.
BlackBerry phones are usually viewed as business phones but the 8110 also has applications that target non-business users.
One example is Facebook. For those who constantly need to find out their friends' antics or let others know what they are up to, the Facebook application is perfect.
Never miss anything again as you can easily update your current status, check all your friends' status, post pictures, poke a friend and even post on his or her Wall while on the move.
Besides the BlackBerry's traditional strength in e-mail-on-the-go with BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Internet Service, the 8110 also lets you stay in touch with your friends via the Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk chat applications.
The 8110 is also a decent multimedia device. For music playback, its speakers are loud and produce good sound. Its 2 megapixel camera with flash also takes decent pictures. A microSD card slot at the side of the phone takes care of any storage expansion needs.
Where the 8110 disappoints is in the area of connectivity - it does not have Wi-Fi or high speed 3G support. It only has the slower GPRS connection.
FINAL SAY The BlackBerry 8110 Pearl has features that appeal to both business and non-business users. But without Wi-Fi or 3G support, it is behind the curve compared to other phones in its class.
