Should it be deemed as the Empire Strikes Back? After Steve Jobs left the Macworld in San Francisco last week innumerable jaws had dropped and the rest were drooling at what they had just seen. The ‘iPhone’ touted as the future of smartphones and a possible eliminator of the oh-so-ancient cell phones, … well, knock knock… it has a challenger.
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Research In Motion (RIM) and T-Mobile have stepped out with a new Blackberry Pearl and well if the black one did not catch your eye, this one surely will, the new Pearl in lustrous white. You think what has this one got ? Well, welcome the new age smartphone. Its 3.1 ounces unlike its cousins who were all heavyweight boxers and with dimensions like four inches long, two inches wide and half an inch thick, this is a masterpiece.
And if that was not enough, it packs in the knockout punch with its pricing. At $149 with a two year contract, this white pearl is going to send you scampering off to get one for yourself. T-Mobile's MDA or BlackBerry 8700g cost $250 after rebates and well Apple better look away here after they priced their ‘jewel’ for a hefty $499 and $599.
The SureType based 4 row 5 column modified QWERTY keypad makes its way here too so, does the shiny trackball which gives the device its name. The Pearl was the first Blackberry with a camera and other multimedia features and this one carries it ahead. A 1.3 MegaPixel camera with onboard flash and 5x digital zoom. The media player supports MP3, AAC, AMR, polyphonic MIDI and WAV sound formats and MPEG-4 and H.263 video formats.
Of course the other features are all in – contact list and calendar, Bluetooth 2.0, Web Browser, Blackberry Maps, Push e-mail, voice dialing, SMS and MMS messaging and also Instant messaging (on T-Mobile version only). Yes, the phone is quad band and EDGE enabled too. The Pearl is currently only available with T-Mobile or Cingular service in the United States, Rogers Wireless in Canada, and all networks in the UK.
So, all the corporate guys are making a run for it? Yes. But the rush is bigger this time, because with the new Pearl there is a shift in the consumer base. This one seems to be bridging the gap between on the run business professionals and the ever demanding consumers who want to have data availability all around.
Plus with costs getting lower this one is going to fit the bill for regular consumers even more. Blackberry had earlier surveyed that 3 out of 4 upgrades amongst Blackberry customers had been for personal e-mails and not to access corporate mail servers. The white Pearl is surely going to make college kids, soccer moms and general consumers smile with all the features they get at the great price.
Apple might have priced their ‘iPhone’ like a Ferrari in smartphones but this little one is still a sports car and one with lots of punch and packs in lots of oomph for the fashion conscious with its color, size and the features. Not to forget the pricing.
Who will have the last laugh? The results will tell when the ‘iPhone’ hits the market via Cingular. As of now it can surely be taken that the Empire has Struck Back. They are not going to let Apple call the shots in their field.
one is a tablet pc, one is a smart phone
This article totally misses... not only does it read more like advertising (you don't think Apple is going to be smart enough to have network partners that will eat the cost in exchange for two year contracts? Duh), than a substantive article, but the real issue is that these are two categories of devices.
The DAY that iphone details were posted I bought my company a fleet of 8703e blackberries. Why? Well, Apple has produced the long awaited replacement for their 1990s stunner, the Newton. We've all been sitting here in techland waiting for Apple to re-introduce it, and in fact that's pretty much what they've done. Touchscreen, very attractive, great multimedia, etc, etc. And remember, this is Apple, and this is a first gen product, so this thing has a number of milestone features planned in coming software and hardware revs - that's how apple keeps the stock price up.
But for business customers, we're concerned about a different set of problems. I need a device that lets get get through 500+ email messages a day, does guaranteed delivery, lets me access my desktop with VNC, lets me access my servers over SSH, get paged via realtime texting when servers have problems, and that will, of course, integrate with my corporate email.
Apple has produced a product that will probably have a large affect on the design of future handholds, but it's only just reintroduced a product that it had introduced long ago - this time wth wireless.
The Pearl is another iteration of the blackberry. Yes, it shares much of the capabilities. But, Blackberry had better learn early to distinguish itself from Apple's iPhone, as BlackBerry right now (I'm not saying this won't change) is a business oriented telephone with some interesting capabilities such as messaging and some addon products, while Apple is a touchscreen desktop-like tablet pc (running osx-"ish") that is more like a mobile computer. Just because the devices have some convergence doesn't make them the same device.
iPhone is a slate style tablet pc, long used in industries like medicine and manufacturing (see http://pcworld.about.com/news/Mar112004id114955.htm), whereas that distinction can't go to Pearl - it really is a mobile communications device - a "smart phone", and will always be that (you won't find desktop apps "making the leap" to Blackberry anytime soon - you WILL find OSX applications doing it to iPhone, IMHO).
Just my 2c. I don't know why people like to compare these two products so much. BTW, we LOVE our blackberry 8703e - they work great, have broadband speeds, do everything mentioned before, and "just work". That's why we bought a fleet the day Apple announced the iPhone - we don't need a tablet pc with a new, sexy and probably immature platform. No, we'll wait until our two year agreement wears out, and then we'll see. ;-)
Jonathan Lambert
CEO
FireBright, Inc.
lol... the thing is ugly.
lol... the thing is ugly.
Things it lacks
Unlike it's cousins it lacks broadband support and A2DP (no bluetooth stereo headphone support + a flimsy headphone jack = trouble for music listeners). Otherwise it's a decent product.
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