I was fed up with my Palm Treo 650. Fed up enough to break contract and go with something else no matter what it cost me. I had Earthlink Wireless and my coverage was poor almost everywhere. The Treo 650 stopped retrieving emails after a while and I’m not sure if that was the fault of the unit or the service, but in any case I wasn’t getting email. On top of that, the Treo 650 would restart at random. It would restart in the middle of the night, in the middle of calls, and just about any other unexpected time. Some may say it was third party software causing it to crash, but I didn’t have any at all. I just did a hard reset to factory defaults and experienced the same issues. I figured this was unacceptable and it was time for a change. Cingular (now AT&T) and Verizon offer excellent coverage in my area and areas I travel to frequently. I know going with either of them work work much better than Earthlink. The next item in hand was to pick a handset that would suit my needs. I wanted email and internet capability as well as contact management, calendars, and the usual phone ability. I decided a smart phone would be the best fit and I decided to go with the Blackberry Pearl.

I went with AT&T, because I intend to get an Apple iPhone. I figure it would make the transition smoother if I was already with the provider of choice. I chose the Blackberry Pearl because it’s been a proven solution for a lot of people and I didn’t see why it wouldn’t work for me. As far as service plans go, I was paying about $100 for the Treo and after switching to AT&T I pay about the same. Both plans offered unlimited email and internet and a decent amount of anytime minutes. The only difference is the AT&T plan actually works and I’m hoping it will continue to work.

As far as equipment is concerned, the Blackberry Pearl offers email, an organizer, web browser, phone, maps, media player, SMS, MMS, and calendar as far as software goes. I added Google Maps and the Opera web browser and both work fairly well over the EDGE network. I added a 2GB microSD card to the unit to store music and videos and purchased the software Missing Sync For Blackberry that runs on Mac OS X. For those of you using Macs the software is a great companion and makes it really easy to sync. It syncs photos from iPhoto and music from iTunes as well as contacts from Address Book and events from iCal. The media player is kind of “old school” in my opinion and could use a better user interface. I guess I’m just used to iTunes so I might be taking the ease of use for granted. I hated the SureType interface for the keyboard and disabled it after the first day of trying to deal with it. I’m much more comfortable with MultiTap anyway. The unit offers a speakerphone option which works pretty well and voice activated dialing which I haven’t used on any of my phones. I find it unpractical and it just makes more sense to me to start typing the name of the contact to find the phone number. I tested Bluetooth for a brief moment with the computer and it works. I don’t have a Bluetooth headset and don’t plan to get one either so I don’t have any comment on that issue.

I picked the Blackberry Pearl over the other models because of its size. I was looking for something capable as well as compact and I think the Blackberry Pearl does a good job doing that. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the Blackberry product. The AT&T phone coverage is excellent. The call quality is good. I haven’t had a dropped call yet and I always get my email reliably. I’ve gotten used to the Blackberry interface now and I find that it does a good job as a smart phone. I would recommend it to someone considering a smart phone. I’ll probably have a difference of opinion on June 29 when the Apple iPhone comes out. I hope to get my hands on one, but only time will tell.