BlackBerry was originally the business handset of choice, loved by professionals everywhere. But it’s slowly starting to shed its business-only image as more and more consumers are turned on to its charms – and the Pearl 3G is the culmination of this. As well as BlackBerry’s business features, there’s also media and social networking on offer.

The last Pearl handset, the 8110, was two years ago, and the Pearl 3G takes that formula and improves on it.

Style and handling on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G

The Pearl 3G is has a polished black finish and is about the size of a standard Nokia handset. It feels good in your hand and your pocket, and the classic RIM keypad has nicely spaced-out keys in a nice wavy line formation. It’s the standard RIM keypad – although if you’re in America you’ll get the same half-QWERTY as featured on the original Pearl.

The standard, UK, keypad is the best you’ll find anywhere though. Writing long messages is almost as quick as it is on bigger BlackBerry models such as the Bold 9700. Both the small handed and the fat fingered should get on just fine. Instead of the RIM trackball, there’s an optical trackpad, which isn’t actually as responsive and resulted in some delays when we were scrolling.

The key additions to the Pearl 3G are support for Wi-Fi and HSDPA, which make this as powerful an internet phone as the Bold 9700.

Email on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G

Using what RIM calls SureType and everyone else calls predictive text is far speedier than multi-tap, obviously. Entering non-dictionary words is simple enough, and each new word gets added to the dictionary, saving you having to spell it out again.

Like its predecessors, the Storm 2 and Bold 9700, the Pearl 3G runs on the new BlackBerry OS 5.0, will all the attendant functionality. However, the lack of HTML capability on the email client means graphics usually fail to render.

Other than that, though, you get the full desktop experience: spell check, adding BCCs, flagging important inbox messages and adding priority tags to outgoing messages. You can view and send attachments too – HTML flaws permitting. This is still the quickest and most intuitive email interface available, though. Most actions are centred around the OK button, press it from any app and it will act as the options menu.

You can run up to ten webmail or Microsoft Exchange accounts, and Gmail lets you sync your email contacts with your phonebook. It acts as a simple backup and a good way to transfer details when you change your phone. You can view each account inbox separately or use the universal inbox – a well-implemented and handy feature that aggregates your emails, Facebook messages, texts and direct messages on Twitter.

Internet on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G

The addition of Wi-Fi and HSDPA - plus being one of the few phones to support the new, quicker 802.11n protocol – makes the Pearl 3G a very net-friendly device. The excellent Opera Mini browser opens both mobile-optimised and regular websites, with the latter looking just as they do on a desktop. However, there’s no autofit for the non-mobile sites, so when you zoom in you need to scroll to see full pages. Pictures load quickly and look good, even though the 256k-coloured screen is no contest for an AMOLED screen. To save web images, just hit the OK button and select the option from the menu.

We like the copy and paste function: hit the menu key in the place you want to start copying, and just highlight text from there. You can paste them into any text field, so cut names, URL addresses, or parts of other pages to send to friends via email.

Access to BlackBerry world, RIM’s apps downloads portal, means you can pimp your phone with a choice of 5,000 apps. It may not rival the iPhone’s range, but it’s about as high quality. For instance, the Facebook app integrates with the phone, meaning you can sync Facebook contacts with your phonebook and events with the BlackBerry calendar. It’s very smooth indeed.

Camera on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G

The 3.15-megapixel camera is a big improvement on the last Pearl handset, and is perfectly adequate for desktop viewing and sharing on the web. Daylight shots come out clear and vivid, and look good even when viewed full-screen on a desktop computer. Autofocus works well in close-up shots as well as normal ones, and an LED flash gives you reasonably good photos even in an almost dark room – although it blessed us all with orange faces. One great feature is the ability to adjust a photo’s file size to as low as 50KB before sending it via MMS or email, or uploading it to social networking sites.

It takes video too, which is of good enough quality for spontaneous clips to post on YouTube or similar.

Media on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G

Brilliantly, there are dedicated media keys at the top of the Pearl 3G so you can play, pause and skip tracks without having to take the phone out of your pocket. A 3.5mm audio port and dedicated volume control buttons join the party. Although the Pearl 3G isn’t primarily a media phone, the music and video players are full-bodied, with album art and playlists. You can also keep them running in the background while you take a call or send an email. The 256MB of internal storage won’t get you far, but a microSD card slot gives you the option to expand.

A higher-resolution display than the Pearl 8110 makes video slightly clearer, but the 2.5-inch screen isn’t really large enough to accommodate video viewing.

A-GPS works well – we got a quick fix on our location in Central London and BlackBerry Maps is preloaded. We recommend that you download Google Maps from the apps store.

The verdict on the BlackBerry Pearl 3G

This is a high-performing smartphone with excellent business features and media functionality too. Just the thing for people who want the benefits of a smartphone in the body of a normal phone.