Research in Motion announced Wednesday the latest in its Blackberry smartphone line, the Pearl 8220 Flip. Long a holdout in the flip-case design, RIM’s new four-band EDGE device not only gets a lid, but new multimedia features.
The Blackberry line has long been the business person’s workhorse. With a QWERTY keyboard, the smartphone enabled business people across the globe to practically take their office on the road. While the 8220 Flip delivers the clamshell case preferred by many cell-phone users, there are some sacrifices.
Like most clamshells, the new device has a small screen on the outside for phone and text functions, while the interior 240×320 screen is closer to what Blackberry users expect. Multimedia features include video streaming, stereo Bluetooth 2.0, a graphics equalizer with 11 preset audio profiles, a two-megapixel zoom camera, and a microSD slot.
The smartphone comes with Roxio Media Manager software for managing and syncing music, embedded support for Apple’s iTunes, and PhotoSuite LE software.
The 8220 Flip continues Blackberry’s business focus with DataViz’s Documents to Go software for viewing and editing Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Also included are a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, conference calling, background noise cancellation, and Blackberry Enterprise Server support for secure integration with corporate e-mail systems.
But RIM has replaced the traditional QWERTY keyboard with a SureType keypad that assigns two letters to each key. Longtime Blackberry users may find that a drawback, and even experienced keypad users will need to learn a new system since the SureType does not have the same key assignments as traditional handsets.
The 8220 Flip will be available this fall exclusively from T-Mobile. Prices were not announced, nor were timetables for Europe or the Far East.