Rob Beschizza
Gear

Cingular's Xmas Gift: The Blackberry Pearl

Cingular, America’s biggest cellular carrier, will offer the BlackBerry Pearl beginning Friday. The Pearl, RIM’s first ‘berry to offer a digicam, will gain Cingular’s Push to Talk service and GPS navigation, but will otherwise remain unchanged from the version currently offered through T-Mobile, offering a 240×260 pixel display, access to EDGE networks, e-mail, instant and […]

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Cingular, America's biggest cellular carrier, will offer the BlackBerry Pearl beginning Friday.

The Pearl, RIM's first 'berry to offer a digicam, will gain Cingular's Push to Talk service and GPS navigation, but will otherwise remain unchanged from the version currently offered through T-Mobile, offering a 240x260 pixel display, access to EDGE networks, e-mail, instant and text messaging, voice recognition, 64 MB internal flash RAM and a microSD expansion cart slot.

They call it a QWERTY phone, but it isnt, though it's much less unpleasant to use than standard 3-letters-per-key predictive dialing.
Bluetooth is on board, as is a battery offering two weeks' standby time and 3 1/2 hours chat time.

And it is, of course, somewhat sexier than its functional older stablemates. Cingular will sell it for $200, after rebates, with a two-year subscription.

Press Release [Cingular]