BlackBerry Pearl 8130
Average Ratings
COOL BB PHONE!!!!!
This phone is soooo much fun! It's my first "smartphone" And I love the email feature! I can retrieve it anywhere. Suretype is easy (once you practice for 10 minutes). Setting up email is a breeze. UI is nice. And it's nice and compact, I can't even tell it's on my belt, unlike my last phone the LG VX 8600, which felt bulky in it's leather case. Clarity is great, even with bluetooth and connecting bluetooth is super fast!
Can't give it a perfect 5, since I haven't tried the music player yet, and vibrate mode is a bit weak.
bb pearl
I have the blackberry pearl and I have had since February 2008. I did enjoy it when I first got but truthfully it is not a user error it does erase your messages and contacts without notice. It first happened to me in March 2008 and I was told that all bb does it and I had to remove the battery and then put it back on. Since then it has happened about four times. I was playing the game also and received a text and the entire phone powered off. Wanted to try a smartphone but I don't think it is for me. I do like to receive my emails but it is not worth loosing information before you can even review it.
Good First Data Device
Decent starter into the world of Blackberrys/PDAs.
Pros - Good signal strength, great software (especially compared to normal cell phone), easy to use, good data compression (save $$$)
Cons - Keyboard is unlike any you have seen before (not a full QWERTY and not like a normal cell phone) and definately has a learning curve. Many extra features will cost you extra (and probably wont be disclosed by sales rep)
I won the Pearl and after playing with it for a while gave it to the wife. It functions as a good bridge between a cellular user into the data world but didnt impress me as much.
Great phone.....minus
I have owned almost every phone Verizon offers. This I must say is one the best of have used for many reason. It is also not so good for other reason, not terrible problems though....depending on what you need it for.
I use my phone mainly for email and text. Syncing with my calenders and what not in Outlook. This phone does syncing very well. However when it comes to emailing although the set up could not be easier and the BB push is the best out..... the problem is the keyboard. It is not a full qwerty keyboard which makes things a bit slow for my average if not small hands. I can create text with my 8830 twice as fast then on the Pearl. A real time saver when you get 100 plus emails a day for work.
Again, the phone rocks. Camera is great, multimedia is great, form factor, size and call quality with Verizon can't be beat but imputing email even with text complete on is a little slow due to size. It's really small.
Don't get me wrong, I think the whole package makes this one of the best phones with Verizon BUT I may go back to my 8830 (which in my opinion is the best phone out, minus a camera) because of the ability to use a full size keyboard layout. Very important to me. Although I will miss my camera on the Pearl. If they could morf these two phones into one that would be the best!....oh yea they have it already, its named The Curve, AT&T customers seem to be enjoying it!
Very Dissappointed
I've had nothing but trouble with this phone. For the most part it works fine, but I have to remove the battery at least once a day for it to do what I need it do.
I've had numerous lock ups, or the phone goes dark. But the worst of the problems relates to bluetooth voice dialing.
It just doesn't work. Or it does, then it doesn't until I take out the battery. I spend most of my time with in a car and must use this feature, nothing worse then attempting to make a call and having voice dialing unavailable.
If asked I would not recommend this device.
OK but still a Blackberry
Pros
Size
Battery Life
Camera
Cons
DOES NOT WORK with Toyota, even if Verizon says it does, passed to Toyota, and RIM, but at the end of the day does not work.
Internet is limited with the Blackberry,
Have had a 8703, and 7130, but want to have a better internet access, am going to try a Samsung i760
The neediest smartphone you will ever own
If you're looking for the most unreliable, quirky, erratically functioning excuse for a smartphone that money can buy, put the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 for Verizon at the top of your wishlist!
When I first received my Pearl, I was pretty happy with it. I was very pleased with the size of the device, particularly how easily it fits in a pants pocket, the SureType keyboard was fantastic, and battery life was unmatched.
But soon I found myself bowing to the Pearl's every random demand. I started spending countless hours diagnosing why e-mails have suddenly stopped appearing in my inbox, why I suddenly lost connectivity to the BlackBerry Internet Service, why the Pearl says it's roaming when it's not, why EVDO is suddenly unavailable when it should be full strength, why the radio turned itself off, why half of my personal settings are randomly or always ignored, why the star key on my keyboard won't work until I hit another key first, why my laptop randomly won't see my Pearl's memory card, why my routine data backup failed halfway through ... You get the idea. Maybe I should resend my service books? "You'll start receiving e-mails within 20 minutes." Or not. Maybe I need to yank the battery? Ooh, that fixed the issue, for about 5 minutes. Maybe I need to delete and setup my e-mail accounts from scratch? Nope, still no incoming e-mail. Oh no, the Pearl silently lost all cellular connectivity, so I need to toggle the radio on and off and hope it restores. If not, another battery yank. Maybe I should update my device software? Hmm, that fixed squat. Wow, Verizon partially enabled GPS on the Pearl? Great! About 60% of the time, it acquires my coordinates on the first try. Truly business class.
The BlackBerry Pearl 8130 is the smartphone that you don't own because it owns you. Buy yours today and you'll spend all of your free time trying to figure out why it isn't working as it should.
... Until you do what I do and smack the crap out of it with a sledge in your garage.
Ugggghhhhhhh
I have been having trouble with the phone erasing my text and call log in addition to the phone freezing up and turning off. Sprint replaced the phone, but it still is not working properly. When it works, it is a great phone.
Don't buy this phone for Verizon
I have owned 5 of these in the past 5 months. The only reason I haven't swapped this phone out more is because it's too far away to get to the warranty center. I just got a brand new one less than a week ago and guess what? Same problems with the other 4.
Cons: Erases messages and call log... everyone knows this by now.
- Doesn't play video messages all the time and freezes up the phone so you have to pull the battery. This happened on ALL 5!!!
-Make a call, the person I'm calling hears me and I hear nothing.
Pros: if you don't do any picture/video messaging and don't mind losing text messages or having to pull the battery daily to make calls then it works fine. Everything else is great on the phone.
