Review by D. Truong for BlackBerry 8220 Flip Pearl Unlocked Phone , GPRS, EDGE, and 2 MP Camera–International Version with No Warranty
Rating:
I’ve been using my new Blackberry 8220 flip phone for about a week now. Here are my impressions about this phone… the pros and cons. Keep in mind that this is my first Blackberry phone, so I do not review it in comparison to any other blackberry. Instead, I compare it to other flip phones I’ve had. My last flip phone was the Motorola KRZR K1. This phone eats it up, and spits it out.

Pros:

-Call quality: sound quality while making and receiving calls are good. There doesn’t seem to be a difference in quality between making a wifi call or network phone call (see wifi)

- Wifi: This phone has a built in wifi receiver. This means that if you have a wifi connection at home (or any unsecured wifi signal) you can browse the web with this phone (for free). The pre-installed t-mobile browser is lame (it doesn’t let you browse any website you want unless you sign up for the data plan). Download the free browser “Opera” for this phone, and you can cruise any website you want.

-Wifi calling: When you are connected to a strong wifi signal… you can make calls over the wifi connection, thereby not using up your minutes on your plan… very cool!

-web browsing: Web browsing is as good as it gets on a 240 x 320 resolution screen. Again, I recommend downloading a free copy of the Opera browser. When used with a fast wifi connection, loading time for pages is surprisingly fast.

-Built in mp3 player: The mp3 player works well and sounds good, but the layout/interface could be better. (tip: use button #4,#6 to skip songs instead of using trackball) For example, when the phone is closed… you can only access volume controls. The built in standard 3.5mm headphone jack is fantastic, though! All phones should have this… I absolutely love not having to carry around an annoying adapter just to listen to my music in the car or over headphones. It’s also cool that it has the ability to display album artwork This phone comes with a handsfree headset/stereo headphone… very cool! The included headphones sound surprisingly good too… about as good as a typical $30 set of Sony headphones.

-Screen: The screen is small but gorgeous… colors look saturated and images look very sharp.

-Camera: For a 2 megapixel camera… it works well and does a good job of automatically adjusting shutter and exposure. Color saturation and contrast could be better, though. Even on the highest resolution… images lack high contrast and sharpness. Built in flash is a nice extra.

-mp3 ringers – I really love the fact that you can use any mp3/sound file as a ring-tone, alarm tone, alert tone… etc.

-Texting: At first, I really hated the button configuration for texting. It’s totally different from most phones. But once you get used to it, texting on this phone works very well and the intelligent word suggestions are pretty good at guessing what word you’re typing. The ability to add your own words to the custom library is great, too. I love that when a text messagecomes, you can preview the first few lines of the on the front screen… very useful! Also, there are special status lights on the front of the phone that blinks Red on the front of the phone when you have an unread text.

-Picture texting: Photo texting seems to work relatively well, but the only limitation is that you can only add a few words of text along with the image. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the ‘mms message system’ or phone.

-expandable mini-SD/mini-SDHC. This is awesome for storing tons of images and music for the mp3 player… very cool! Right now, you can expand it up to a 16GB micro SDHC card and essentially have a 16gb Mp3 player in addition to a phone.

Cons:

-Battery Life: Sadly, the battery does not seem to last very long… even when the phone is only used for texting. For example, I noticed that the battery drained down to about 40% capacity from just one day of texting (no phone calls). To be fair, I do text a lot in one day (perhaps 50 a day?) Sadly it’s a phone you’ll probably have to charge every day even if you don’t use it very often throughout the course of your day. If you’re listening Blackberry, please release a Hi-capacity battery for this phone!

-Non-standard USB connector: I don’t like that it has a non-standard usb connection. If you loose the cable, you’ll have to get one especially made for the blackberry. They could have easily made it the standard min-usb to USB connection (but they didn’t… GRrr!) Oh well, at least they got the standard 3.5mm headphone jack right.

- The whole phone is very prone to fingerprint smudging… so it ends up looking oily and kinda gross, if not cleaned like… everyday.

Conclusion: The positive features greatly outweigh the few negative things about this phone. This phone has an impressive array of features… considering how small the device is. It’s really a tiny computer in addition to a phone, and it does most things pretty darn well. If you’re into flip phones, and want one that does more than probably any other one out there…then this one may be the phone for you. I just wish that the battery on this baby lasted longer! Oh well, even tiny computers take lots of juice I guess

Fun tip: You can get the game Pac-man for this phone for free online

Review by Aileen Chen for BlackBerry 8220 Flip Pearl Unlocked Phone , GPRS, EDGE, and 2 MP Camera–International Version with No Warranty
Rating:
I bought this phone as a temporary replacement to my AT&T iPhone. I’d never had a blackberry before, and’ve always been intrigued by them. I’d heard good things about this phone, and on “paper” it’s a great phone for the price: wifi, gps, qwerty keyboard, flip phone, and quadband GSM.

However, I’ve learned the hardway that my iPhone data plan is not really compatible with this T-Mobile phone:

1) the data settings are already hardcoded to T-mobile, so changing them has been an unsurmountable challenge for me

2) Wifi browser is also hardcoded to only work with T-Mobile Hotspots, although I heard you can download a separate browser that will work with all wifi

Things I like

- LED indicator for new text messages, missed calls. (I really wish more phones would have this feature)

- Talk-time battery life, can easily go 4-6 hours of talk time+3 days of standby without any issue

- a typing game on the phone, cheesy, but fun

- standard 2.5mm headset connector (and it comes with the phone!)

- USB charging

Other things I don’t like

- the camera. it’s a tease. there is a flash and digital zoom, but the picture quality still sucks

- the clamshell joint seems to be a little loose

- the external LCD screen is made of a soft plastic, great for getting scratched

Bottom line: If you are a T-Mobile BB subscriber, then this phone should be fantastic as a secondary or “evening” phone (you laugh, but if you’re shopping for this on amazon then I’m probably not too far off target). For other GSM users, this is still a solid offering for a smartphone but maybe something like a Windows Mobile phone might work better for you.

Review by D. Truong for BlackBerry 8220 Flip Pearl Unlocked Phone , GPRS, EDGE, and 2 MP Camera–International Version with No Warranty
Rating:
I’ve been using my new Blackberry 8220 flip phone for about a week now. Here are my impressions about this phone… the pros and cons. Keep in mind that this is my first Blackberry phone, so I do not review it in comparison to any other blackberry. Instead, I compare it to other flip phones I’ve had. My last flip phone was the Motorola KRZR K1. This phone eats it up, and spits it out.

Pros:

-Call quality: sound quality while making and receiving calls are good. There doesn’t seem to be a difference in quality between making a wifi call or network phone call (see wifi)

- Wifi: This phone has a built in wifi receiver. This means that if you have a wifi connection at home (or any unsecured wifi signal) you can browse the web with this phone (for free). The pre-installed t-mobile browser is lame (it doesn’t let you browse any website you want unless you sign up for the data plan). Download the free browser “Opera” for this phone, and you can cruise any website you want.

-Wifi calling: When you are connected to a strong wifi signal… you can make calls over the wifi connection, thereby not using up your minutes on your plan… very cool!

-web browsing: Web browsing is as good as it gets on a 240 x 320 resolution screen. Again, I recommend downloading a free copy of the Opera browser. When used with a fast wifi connection, loading time for pages is surprisingly fast.

-Built in mp3 player: The mp3 player works well and sounds good, but the layout/interface could be better. (tip: use button #4,#6 to skip songs instead of using trackball) For example, when the phone is closed… you can only access volume controls. The built in standard 3.5mm headphone jack is fantastic, though! All phones should have this… I absolutely love not having to carry around an annoying adapter just to listen to my music in the car or over headphones. It’s also cool that it has the ability to display album artwork This phone comes with a handsfree headset/stereo headphone… very cool! The included headphones sound surprisingly good too… about as good as a typical $30 set of Sony headphones.

-Screen: The screen is small but gorgeous… colors look saturated and images look very sharp.

-Camera: For a 2 megapixel camera… it works well and does a good job of automatically adjusting shutter and exposure. Color saturation and contrast could be better, though. Even on the highest resolution… images lack high contrast and sharpness. Built in flash is a nice extra.

-mp3 ringers – I really love the fact that you can use any mp3/sound file as a ring-tone, alarm tone, alert tone… etc.

-Texting: At first, I really hated the button configuration for texting. It’s totally different from most phones. But once you get used to it, texting on this phone works very well and the intelligent word suggestions are pretty good at guessing what word you’re typing. The ability to add your own words to the custom library is great, too. I love that when a text messagecomes, you can preview the first few lines of the on the front screen… very useful! Also, there are special status lights on the front of the phone that blinks Red on the front of the phone when you have an unread text.

-Picture texting: Photo texting seems to work relatively well, but the only limitation is that you can only add a few words of text along with the image. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the ‘mms message system’ or phone.

-expandable mini-SD/mini-SDHC. This is awesome for storing tons of images and music for the mp3 player… very cool! Right now, you can expand it up to a 16GB micro SDHC card and essentially have a 16gb Mp3 player in addition to a phone.

Cons:

-Battery Life: Sadly, the battery does not seem to last very long… even when the phone is only used for texting. For example, I noticed that the battery drained down to about 40% capacity from just one day of texting (no phone calls). To be fair, I do text a lot in one day (perhaps 50 a day?) Sadly it’s a phone you’ll probably have to charge every day even if you don’t use it very often throughout the course of your day. If you’re listening Blackberry, please release a Hi-capacity battery for this phone!

-Non-standard USB connector: I don’t like that it has a non-standard usb connection. If you loose the cable, you’ll have to get one especially made for the blackberry. They could have easily made it the standard min-usb to USB connection (but they didn’t… GRrr!) Oh well, at least they got the standard 3.5mm headphone jack right.

- The whole phone is very prone to fingerprint smudging… so it ends up looking oily and kinda gross, if not cleaned like… everyday.

Conclusion: The positive features greatly outweigh the few negative things about this phone. This phone has an impressive array of features… considering how small the device is. It’s really a tiny computer in addition to a phone, and it does most things pretty darn well. If you’re into flip phones, and want one that does more than probably any other one out there…then this one may be the phone for you. I just wish that the battery on this baby lasted longer! Oh well, even tiny computers take lots of juice I guess

Fun tip: You can get the game Pac-man for this phone for free online