Loving my new T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl

I'm completely sold on my new BlackBerry Pearl. I've only had it a little more than a week but so far I just love it. What's all to love? How about starting with the price on Amazon: with a new 2 year T-Mobile contract, after rebate my phone will cost me: -$20. Yes, I'll net $20 back to me after the rebates. Sweet! Oh, and Amazon threw in free 2 day shipping on it.

Hey, but what's $20 and a new phone in my pocket if it isn't good. So here's why I think it's great.

1. Form factor: it's perfectly small but still functional. Small enough to fit in a pocket on a dress shirt or pants without looking odd, large enough to have a great screen and usable keyboard
2. Back from 00-02, I used one of the larger original email only BBerry's. Loved the email service then. Integration with a phone is top rate. And the new trackball to replace the old thumbwheel works great and feels natural.
3. Voice dialing!!! Wow, this worked first time right out of the box. Click the left dedicated button, wait for it to initialize and I said "call home" and boom, it responds "home calling" and soon my home phone is ringing. No "training" it to learn my voice or anything.
4. Nice enough little camera with a zoom and flash.
5. Great enterprise email server. We use Lotus Notes (ack) but the BBerry server integration works great. It took a little bit of effort to get it configured and set up right, but once it's working, it just works.
6. T-Mobile: Porting my # from my old carrier (Verizon) was a piece of cake. I called the # Amazon had given me for this and it went easy. I had been worried about this for a phone bought online but no need to worry.

Now, to prove I'm not a complete cheerleader on this, a few downsides:

1. I've had several Java exception errors already and had to soft reset the phone already once to get rid of one. That's bad. A phone should just work.
2. This is more an issue with Notes and IntelliSync but syncing personal Notes contacts with my BBerry was a pain. Intellisync crashed when exporting my contacts initially. To get them all over to BBerry I eventually had to export them from Notes to Vcard, vcard to outlook express, and Sync Outlook Express to BBerry via Intellisync. Also, because I use multiple Notes address books (the contacts list on the client and the company address book on the server) I'll never really have a sync's list.
3. Looking up an address wirelessly in the company address book can take several minutes. Fortunately, once it's been looked up once, I can add it to the address book on the BBerry.

Comments

[Nicholas C. Zakas]

Too bad it uses TMobile. I switched a while back because I could barely get a signal anywhere. There was no way to call home and talk about how the Patriots destroyed the Colts yet again. :)

[Jim Minatel]

So far my t-mobile service experience has been good here in Indy. I'm on the raod in Vegas next week (see everyone at Dev Connections!) so we'll see what kind of roaming experience I get. I'd checked the coverage/signal strength map for the area around our house and work before I bought and it looked good (Cingular and t-mobile have a tower about 1 mile from the house) and a couple of folks in the office have t-mobile and are happy enough with it.

Can you believe my wife bought us concert tickets for Sunday night without checking the game schedule? I'm missing not only the game but Simpson's Treehouse of Horror. Tivo to the rescue!