BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220

Clamshell fans finally have a smart phone worth buying. The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 ($149 from T-Mobile) offers the familiar push e-mail and reliability consumers have come to expect from a BlackBerry, in a design that both protects the screen and offers a more comfortable calling experience. Plus, you get built-in Wi-Fi and a bigger keyboard than you’ll find on a typical Pearl. We would have liked to see 3G data support, especially since T-Mobile’s HSDPA network is in 20 markets and counting, but the Pearl Flip is a solid messaging and multimedia phone.

Design

The Pearl Flip, which weighs 3.6 ounces and measures 3.9 x 2.0 x 0.7 inches, has a smaller footprint than the BlackBerry Pearl 8210 but is a hair thicker while closed. We like the glossy black exterior (T-Mobile says a dark red option will be available in upcoming weeks) and the matte black finish of the backlit keyboard inside. RIM’s trademark trackball is above the keyboard. It was responsive but because of the clamshell design the trackball is more recessed than on a traditional Pearl, which takes some getting used to.

On the front of the Pearl Flip, above the external display, is a 2-megapixel camera with flash. The left side of the phone houses the mute button, 3.5mm headphone jack, micro-USB port, and voice-command button. A welcome new external microSDHC Card lines the right side of the Pearl Flip, along with volume up/down buttons and the camera launch key.

The Pearl Flip’s 320 x 240-pixel internal display is bright and crisp. Web sites looked sharp, and the menus all appeared as if they were painted on the screen. The internal display is only 0.1 inches larger than the Pearl 8120, but the resolution has been bumped up from 260 x 240 pixels. The Pearl Flip’s external display measures 1.6 inches and has a lower 160 x 128-pixel resolution. You can use this screen for screening calls and previewing messages.

Above the keypad are four buttons that surround the trackball: the Send and End keys, the Berry button, and a return key. We like the display’s drop-hinge—a feature we’ve seen on notebooks before but rarely on a phone—but it felt a bit awkward at first. When opened, the flipped-back part of the phone acts as a natural resting spot for your pointer finger while you’re typing.

Keyboard

The Pearl Flip’s SureType keypad is both flatter and smoother than the original Pearl’s keyboard; the keys felt more spacious than the earlier Pearl models, and all had a good bounce to them. The Alt button is awkwardly close to the @ key, but we got used to this over time.

The SureType software itself was excellent and has certainly improved; it recognized “Sportsillustrated” in the Web browser off of the bat, and although it didn’t recognize “CNN” the first time, it did so the next time. When we purposely misspelled “Gold” on the older Pearl 8120 by typing “Gnld,” it yielded Gold, Gild, Half, Held in the autocorrect options. With the Pearl Flip, it gave us Gold, Golf, Gulf, Gild, and Hold.