Blackberry Pearl 3G on Telstra

[Oneworldplus2]

Hi people,
Just saw that Telstra is releasing the new Blackberry Pearl 3G and it's on a half decent plan too (who would have thought, Telstra?!?!). Telstra has exclusive rights till September on this mobile.

BlackBerry Pearl 3G smartphone - Mobile Phones - Telstra

I'm only starting this thread because my trusty old Nokia 6120 is on the verge of dying. I'm locked in to Telstra because 99% of mine sites here in W.A. only have Telstra coverage on site. To me, there is no point getting a Optus/Voda mobile, going to work for x number of weeks and paying for a mobile that you can't use.

I'm on the old $79 cap plan currently. If l purchase this, l will drop to a new $59 Cap bundle, which is almost the same as the old $79cap. So l'm back where l started. But, with a new mobile.

I have just stuck to Nokia's over the years because they were very easy to use and used to be pretty reliable. There aren't a lot of Nokia's available through Telstra now days.

So, to ALL those people out there that currently have a BlackBerry, what are they like? Is the build quality good? E-mail capability? Easy of use? Security?



Thanks in advance.

 

[ejb]

Hi,

I have the Bold and before that had the Pearl. The pearl does not have a true QWERTY keyboard as each button is two letters so it can be a little slower typing emails.

Apart from that blackberry's are great for email, easy to use but not great for web browsing.

I have found them to be as good as a nokia when it comes to knocking it around a bit. I would not give up me BB for anything but I will admit I use mrs ejb iPhone a lot now for mobile AFF (great app) and playing games.

ejb

 

[moa999]

Have the Bold 9700 which is great, admittedly on a Corporate BES which is really where BB have their advantage.

Blackberries are renowned for build quality (apart from the trackballs in the recent Bolds/Pearls) - thankfully replaced with the trackpad in the Bold 9700 and Pearl3G.

BB5 software is good but the browser is still a bit behind others. The new BB6 firmware (due in 3Q and available as an upgrade for the 3G) looks awesome, if you don't mind the Black Eyed Peas
YouTube - BlackBerry 6 sneak peek at WES 2010

Having used a Pearl previously you get used to the keyboard pretty quickly and there are a lot less clashes with 2 letter per key compared to 3 on a normal mobile.

BBs are great for text email, not so good with attachments (eg word, excel, pdf), although this has improved markedly.

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Thanks for the replies,
l'll be holding off a week, fingers crossed my Nokia makes it. Looks like l'll get getting the BB Pearl 3G. I did see that there are 2 models to choose from, the layout of the button/keyboard, 9100 and 9105 models.


Other news

The new iPhone is coming out on the 8th June. We've all seen the prototype that Gizmodo.com paid $5k for when 1 was found in a bar in LA last month. This Is Apple's Next iPhone
http://www.pcworld.com/article/194637 apple_screwed_up_handling_iphone_gizmogate.html

HTC also has a new behemoth of a mobile coming out soon, the HTC Evo 4G HTC Evo 4G Review: A War Machine | Gizmodo Australia(although it looks like this model might not make it to Australia).