BlackBerry Pearl launched in India.

Research In Motion (RIM) has refreshed its Pearl series. The two new models introduced are the Pearl 9100 and Pearl 9105. Both share the same internal hardware. However, there is one main differentiation on the outside; the 9100 has regular a 20-button half-QWERTY keyboard, while the 9105 has a typical numeric keypad. It is kind of ironic to see a num-pad on a Blackberry, since all of them till date have a QWERTY board. People from RIM said they introduced the 9105 for people who aren't willing to get acclimatized to a full keyboard.


Both models are fairly compact and weigh just under 100 grams. 3G (HSDPA) makes its way into these, and just in time with the ending of the spectrum auctions in India. They may look petite but have potent hardware inside -- a 624 MHz processor and 256 MB RAM run the BlackBerry OS 5 on-board. The screen has a fairly sharp 326 x 400 pixel resolution. The trackball is now replaced with the optical track-pad found on recent BlackBerrys. Camera's been bumped up to 3.2 mega-pixels, with auto-focus and LED flash. GPS chip's added for navigation, and this is the first BlackBerry to support Wi-Fi 802.11 'n' standard, along with 'b' and 'g'. A 1150 mAh battery commits to give five-and-a-half hours of talk-time over a 3G network.

The pricing of these handsets has not yet been declared but we estimate it to be around the Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 25,000 price bracket, since their flagship Bold 9700 sells for close to Rs. 30,000 here. The price and selling date will be announced with time, and we'll be there to review these when they are on the store shelves.