Review: BlackBerry Borrows Pearl Pointer
The maker of BlackBerry e-mail phones has managed to reinvent its wheel repeatedly, churning out surprising new models and innovative redesigns that have repeatedly left rivals in the dust.
But it’s not so easy to wow the masses with every product launch, and the latest BlackBerry reveals a little design fatigue at Research in Motion Ltd.
That’s a quibble, though, as the new 8800 looks sharper than RIM’s current top-of-the-line 8700: It’s more than 25 percent thinner, and it packs some key multimedia enhancements.
One puzzling shortcoming is that the 8800 runs on the slower data network operated by AT&T Inc.’s Cingular Wireless, which will sell the $500 device for as little as $300 with calling plan and BlackBerry e-mail service commitments.
The most striking change, an improvement that nonetheless will displease some BlackBerry traditionalists, is that the company has decided it’s time to ditch the side clickwheel. That wheel has been used to navigate every RIM device since the first came out a decade ago — until, that is, last August. That’s when RIM introduced a front trackball on the “Pearl,” a cell phone-sized BlackBerry geared toward consumers.
The Pearl’s instant popularity has helped drive BlackBerry’s subscriber growth to record levels by a wide margin. And so, quicker than you can say “profit shmofit” or “tradition shmadition,” RIM is adapting the front trackball to its flagship e-mail device for business users.
This is a good thing. The front trackball, clickable like a computer mouse, addresses the reality that there’s a lot more to do these days on a mobile device than merely scroll up and down through e-mail. And the trackball is still perfectly suited to simpler tasks of old even if you don’t want to access Web pages, watch video clips or listen to music.
But in borrowing one innovation from the Pearl, it would…
