The 8120 is the latest in Blackberry's Pearl series. Though venerable in the business
domain, Blackberries were devoid of any con-sumer frills which other phones offered-thus the Pearl 8100 was born, but it came with some shortcomings. The 8120 improves on many aspects but one-3G-but that shouldn't matter in India anyway. The 8120 is simply gorgeous-something you will fall in love with at first sight. The phone is slim, lightweight and feels superb to hold. Its dimensions are perfect-comfortable in the palm and the pocket.

The 2.2-inch display may not be the best, but it is bright enough to get your work done. Properly aliased fonts are easy on the eyes and make the most out of this screen. The 8120 makes do with a pseudo-QWERTY keypad-two letters per key, and text entry is predictive. It takes a while to get use to this format, but we got up and running on it within an hour. The roller ball (pearl) at the centre is used for navigating menus, pages, etc., and works like a charm. The unusual input method feels odd, but once you get used to it, going back to another format is boring.

Business features are the forte of Blackberries, and that requires no introduction. The phone can easily handle most commonly used files types-DOC, XLS, PDF, etc. The PIM functions are well implemented, and are quite easy to grasp. The 8120 supports most music formats, and does a good job of playing them. It even plays MPEG4 video. The 3.5 mmjack lets you plug in better earphones if you want them. The jack is placed near the top edge, and will be uncomfortable when in your pocket. The phone comes with a paltry 64 MB of internal memory, but supports a hot-swappable microSD card. Black¬berry hasn't been able to fix the basic issues with their cameras-photographs lack sharpness, and tonal accuracy suffers.

Internet browsing using WiFi was great; not so much with GPRS. The phone also supports Bluetooth and USB. When it comes to the core function of being a telephone, Blackberry outshines most and the Pearl 8120 is no exception. It has the best call reception in this entire test. During our test, the phone remained alive for four days before needing a recharge. At Rs 25,000, the Pearl 8120 is an excellent business device with just one short coming-no 3G (high speed internet). If you are interested in this model for the multimedia capabilities, we'd advise you to look elsewhere.

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