Blackberry Pearl Flip

The Pearl Flip is a novel looking handset. It’s a clamshell design and Blackberry worked on the mechanism to give it a slightly different look with a chrome lump on the top of the device serving as a rather large hinge for the clamshell. Build quality is good over the front of the phone but the battery cover is plasticy and gets loose quickly. Other than that we like the design of the phone itself — it looks neat and the clamshell mechanism itself is intricately designed and eye catching. It has a decent screen and a pseudo-QWERTY keypad where a single key is shared by two alphabets. The outer screen is useful for displaying status messages and such, and can be configured to display different information. By default, this area shows a large analogue clock. For a clamshell, the Pearl Flip looks a little large but not overly so. The famous Blackberry trackball (which is how the phones get their name as its typically white and when lit up looks like a pearl) is also present and makes navigation a snap. The keypad is well laid out but it’s more suited for typing numbers than long messages and mails. It is not as good as a full QWERTY. The keys themselves are flush with the body and exude decent feedback; some amount of bevelling on the top would have made things easier.

The Pearl Flip has a decent antenna that offers good clarity on-call but it’s not as good as some of the Nokia phones. We like the audio quality of the handsfree unit, both on call as well as for music, although to be honest there are better options around. A plus is the 3.5-mm interface meaning your headphones can also be used.

Priced at Rs. 21,990 the Pearl Flip seems more like a fun phone than a serious Blackberry device and this will cause many to overlook it. People who want Blackberry’s usually want a full keypad since they’re typically using their handset to send at least 25 mails a day. The Flip is not as usable as the other Blackberrys in this regard and we’re suggesting you give it a wide berth as well.