The very popular Blackberry messaging phone is well known for doing one thing right, and that’s mobile email. But things are changing with the release of the a new version outfitted with a trackball for navigation. They’re calling it the Blackberry Pearl.

The original Blackberry remains popular because of the large screen and the QWERTY keyboard, operated with your thumbs. Couple this with a simple navigation system and email automatically delivered to your phone, and the Blackberry became a must-have device for millions of people around the world. But using your Blackberry to play music, videos, take photos and for a richer multimedia experience wasn’t something the Blackberry was originally designed to do, and competitors including Nokia, Apple, Microsoft, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and others have powered ahead with handheld multimedia devices of their own.

Now RIM (Research in Motion), the company behind the Blackberry, have unveiled a new model that has been three years in the making: the Blackberry Pearl. Outfitted with a unique ‘pearl’ shaped device which you can see in the image above, this is a glowing trackball that lets you easily navigate the screen of the Pearl and all of its options, in conjunction with the keyboard. The keyboard is still in the QWERTY orientation, but squeezes two letters onto each key, roughly halving the number of keys needed on the device. Words are still typed in letter by letter, but when a word is typed using the same combination of letter key presses as another word, you get a list of choices on the screen which you can use the Pearl trackball to choose from and select. Blackberry call it ‘SureType’, and while not as instantly easy to use as a keyboard with separate keys for each letter, it’s quite similar to the ‘predictive text’ system used on most mobile phones, and is something most users have very quickly become used to.

While initial reviews are quite positive, some wish for external music controls (i.e. buttons for play, pause, ff and rew), they wish the memory card socket wasn’t placed underneath the battery (needing the phone to be turned off and opened up if you want to swap memory cards), while others have noted the phone’s lack of Wi-Fi or the inability of the 1.3 megapixel camera (which should be 2 megapixels or even higher) to record video clips - it only takes photos.

All of that said, it is RIM’s first true multimedia Blackberry, and incorporates a very clever trackball to make navigation easy in such a small phone. It sports a bright, large screen and still has the QWERTY keyboard that makes messaging so much easier. It’s currently only available in the US from a telco called T-Mobile. They have exclusive rights for the next two months, but in the lead up to the holiday season you’re sure to see the Blackberry from a local company, probably Telstra, and then followed by Optus and Vodafone, before Christmas. No local pricing is available as yet, but you can expect it to cost under $1000, and be available on a plan.

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