BlackBerry Pearl 8100 (2006)

Good – Small, thin and compact are the words to describe the Blackberry Pearl 8100 mobile phone. Users will find that it is easy to navigate through the menu's with the mouse ball - looking button located conveniently in the centre. As this phone was used mainly for calls and emailing, I found that the battery life was not as long lasting as compared to Nokia E71 handset. But then again the handy usb cable or car charger usually does the trick.

As for emailing or texting, the keypads feature two words per keypad which is a pain to use. Typing a message / email would take a long time without the predictive text or T9 function. I personally would prefer a Blackberry handset with a full “qwerty” keypad for heavy emailing or messaging.

Also there are ongoing additional fees to manage push email and over the air data synchronisation. You will need to shop around for an unlimited Blackberry data plan to suit your requirements. One of the first blackberry's which comes in a slim form factor, great features included such as 1.3mp camera, music, video, micro sd slot for expandable memory, bluetooth, loud speaker etc The fact that you have to be on a Blackberry Data Plan in order to use the additional services. There are ongoing additional fees to manage push email and over the air data synchronisation. You need to sign up with your service provided for these services.

Bad – Exited at first, let me down in the end! The standard business and multimedia functions are worth their weight in gold. But the primary use of such an item is the voice communication, of which within 2 months of owning, the speaker failed. I could hear the caller; however, they could not hear me. I would have to take the back of the device off, remove the battery, and reload to enable voice communications again. Then a month or so after that, well the phone just started to freeze on a daily basis. Overall Blackberry’s ultimate phone is not worth the expense or frustration. My faith in Blackberry has diminished, as with my colleges of who all have experienced the same issues…..TAKE IT BACK! Has all the bells n' whistles as you would expect from Blackberry, email and business functionality and multimedia. Suited to those with a life on the road. Forget the camera, useless, also missing is the Wi-Fi.

Terrible – Surely, 3 out of 3 blackberry pearls (or should that be blacberry lemon) cannot be coincidence? I still rate BB better than Optus customer service though After using a BB, I'm going to find it hard to go back to an ordinary phone. Being able to download google maps and use it as street directory is great, voice dialling, synchronising with outlook etc is great. They are total lemons!

Zoom function on camera stopped working, earphone jack is useless and after 3 months the screen died. BB have a replacement policy so it was replaced. The replacement lasted 3 days before microphone stopped. No one can hear me talk. I bought another BB pearl for my partner (before I had so many problems) and he can only talk with the earphones in (which are usless) or on speaker phone.