Engadget reports that RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl (what had been reported as the BlackBerry 8100) will be coming to T-Mobile on September 18.

The device is RIM’s first cameraphone. It also offers media capabilities and external storage. Other specs include:

* 65k color 240 x 260 display
* microSD slot
* 64MB internal flash memory
* EDGE data

It looks like it will retail for $199 at launch.

BlackBerry Pearl Reviews

CNET has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; EDGE) RIM BlackBerry Pearl in San Francisco using T-Mobile service, and call quality wasn’t quite up to snuff. On our end, callers sounded a bit muffled, while our friends said though they could hear us clearly, our voice sounded a bit digitized. We could still carry on a conversation, but it just wasn’t the same crystal-clear quality we’ve experienced with other BlackBerrys, such as the BlackBerry 7130c. Activating the speakerphone didn’t help matters either. … Though nothing revolutionary, the addition of multimedia features and the already solid e-mail capabilities make the RIM BlackBerry Pearl an attractive device for business users and consumers alike.” Link.

FoxNews has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “Because it’s pretty darn hard to cram it all into a small device, the MicroSD slot is located in the battery compartment. That means you have to pull the back panel off and take the battery out any time you’d like to freshen the song collection on the storage card. All that’s missing, acknowledges RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis, is GPS location tracking and Wi-Fi capability. But again, compromises are what it’s all about in this pursuit of little gizmo nirvana. If you can’t handle it, feel free to carry a laptop.” Link.

BusinessWeek has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “in short, the business features are strong. The Pearl’s weakness is in the bells and whistles designed to appeal to consumers. This is the first BlackBerry to incorporate either a camera or a media player. The 1.3-megapixel camera compares favorably with those on most high-end handsets. But the kinds of photo-sharing applications showing up on camera phones of all sorts are not available for BlackBerry. … The Pearl is clearly an effort by RIM to make the corporate-oriented BlackBerry more attractive to consumers. I suspect, however, that its main appeal will be to folks in traditional BlackBerry markets who are willing to sacrifice ease of typing for a phone that is smaller, cooler, and more versatile. For them, the Pearl should be an easy winner.” Link.

The NY Times has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl, and writes, “the Pearl is a pearl. It’s a beautiful, black-and-chrome, incredibly tiny slab. At 4.2 by 2 by 0.6 inches, it’s much smaller than a Treo, Sidekick or Motorola Q; you’ve eaten candy bars bigger than this phone. Yet there’s nothing small about the feature list: color screen, speakerphone, two side buttons that you can program, Bluetooth 2.0 (for wireless connections with laptops, headphones and cars), and so on. … In the end, this very polished Pearl is all about the sweet spot; for such a wisp of a thing, it’s an awful lot of machine. Considering how many things it does, and how well, you may be amazed to learn that no laws of physics were broken in the making of this phone.” Link.

TechDigest has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “The performance of the Pearl could be battery sapping. After all, it’s got a great screen that adjusts it’s brightness according to your surroundings, Push email, and more backlighting than you can shake a stick at. In fact, I got about 3 days fairly typical use from a single charge. … Despite it’s faults, the Blackberry Pearl is tempting. Whether it’ll get those elusive consumers emailing on the move I suspect will depend largely on the packages carriers put together - there’s still a fear held by many people that they will somehow end up with an enormous phone bill come the end of the month if they use data services.” Link.

Pocket-lint has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “It’s certainly thin and suave getting plenty of oohs and arhhs from our collection of BlackBerry users we cobbled together to help us with this review. Where the phone will succeed is those looking for more messaging, but not prepared to go for the rather large full QWERTY keyboard option already offered by RIM. And at that task it succeeds in offering something of a middle man without losing its way on the journey. Grumbles? Well it has to be getting used to the rocker key keypad (although this shouldn’t take you too long) and the losing of the scroll wheel at the side, other than that, it’s a BlackBerry through and through and we like it.” Link.

PCMag has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “A quad-band worldphone, the Pearl has strong reception and sharp, clear audio. The speakerphone is loud enough for indoor and in-car use. … The BlackBerry Pearl is a delight. It combines truly excellent push e-mail, a gorgeous screen, a relatively high-quality camera, and the beginnings of some great media functionality in a very pretty package. As long as you can cope with the little hybrid keyboard, it’s a much classier and more powerful alternative to the Sidekick and other BlackBerry models.” Link.

Infosync has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “The smallest and lightest of all the Blackberry phones — and the first to arrive with a built-in camera — scores with its potent mix of messaging and PIM abilities, but its eponymous Pearl trackball gave us headaches. And while the handset’s multimedia features and friendly main menu may draw in plenty of RIM newbies, they’ll be scratching their heads once they dig into the typically arcane, text-only submenus, calendars and contact lists.” Link.

LaptopMag has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “The calls we made with the Pearl on T-Mobile’s network were fine, but there was a rather airy quality to them, especially when compared to the Motorola Q and Nokia E62. We consistently got a strong signal while traveling around Atlanta, however. The voice-dialing option also worked reasonably well, especially for contacts with only one number associated. … The Pearl is the sexiest smart phone yet, and a strong performer to boot.” Link.

ITWeek has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “Because of the small size of the BlackBerry Pearl, its keyboard is a compromise compared with the qwerty design on other models. It puts two letters onto each key, and uses predictive text to work out what word the user is typing. Called SureType, this works well enough when composing text messages or the body of emails, but email addresses and other non-standard words will trip it up. … RIM claims a battery life of up to three-and-a-half hours for talk time and 15 days on standby.” Link.

The Globe and Mail has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “The screen appears to be as sharp, if not sharper, than the larger one on the BlackBerry 8700, but it does present a greater constraint when surfing the Web. Don’t expect to read your daily Dilbert comic strip on the Pearl without serious navigation.) … the Pearl is not the perfect phone. But the very fact that one can start thinking about it in absolute terms suggests it’s getting close. This is one sexy cellphone, smaller than its competitors and loaded with features that look and feel like they all belong there.” Link.

SiliconRepublic has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “The device will appeal to hard-working executives who want style without surrendering any of the functions of the original BlackBerrys. Looks-wise it is slick but also discreet. Its colour LCD screen is very impressive and although it is smaller than the traditional BlackBerry screens, it loses none of the impact, presenting information crisp and clear. To my mind RIM has upped the stakes and have made a deft opening move before any of its rivals can field their troops. At €199 (including Vat) the device is at a price point its strongest advocates can easily afford.” Link.

MobileBurn has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and concludes, “Its user interface might seem a bit vast and archaic to the uninitiated, but I think that the typical road warrior user will manage to adapt to it very quickly. The issue is that the general consumer will be less willing, or capable, to deal with that learning curve. As such, RIM has a long way to go before it can expect mass acceptance of their phones by Joe Consumer. But with that said, I still think that the Pearl 8100 is a fantastic phone. It has the basic multimedia capabilities that people want, it is small and compact, yet it offers great text input and a novel trackball for navigation. I give it a “Highly Recommended” rating in spite of the trackball problem that caused me to miss a number of calls. Hopefully RIM will come up with a firmware fix for that soon.” Link.

Brighthand has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “There’s no doubt about it, the Pearl is a huge step forward for RIM. This smartphone offers features that many current and potential BlackBerry users have been wanting for years. But, for all its progress, I think this company still has a ways to go. Its implementation of some of the new multimedia features in the Pearl is a bit clumsy and are in real need of polish. And it still lacks features business users want, like better and easier access to Microsoft Office files. … All in all, I think this is a decent smartphone, and certainly better RIM’s first one, the BlackBerry 7100 series. But it still needs some work if it’s going to stand up to the competition.” Link.

MobileTechReview reviews the BlackBerry Pearl and concludes, “The BlackBerry Pearl is RIM’s ideal device to bring fresh recruits to the “CrackBerry” camp with its sleek style and new-user friendly features. In this fashion conscious mobile market, looks alone will sell quite a few Pearls. While traditional BlackBerry users will need some time to get used to the new keyboard and form factor, the updated software bundle including the media player, voice dialing software and Maps will surely move some of them forward. Now BlackBerry is finally starting to compete with feature-rich PDA phones and smartphones, though they still have a way go to.” Link.

DigitalTrends has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and comes to the following conclusion: “While it looks sleek and fancy, there is no reason for a shrunken BlackBerry if it means shrunken text-input functionality. Still, if you don’t plan to compose long responses, but rather seek a little entertainment and have a desire to snap a candid picture to accompany your e-mail without looking like a hip-holster geek then you qualify as a Pearl diver.” Link.

Absolute Gadget has a review up of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “Sending and receiving emails is the major part of this phone. It is just plainly great and if sending emails on a phone is what your want to do, then I can thoroughly recommend this for that task. … My one bugbear is the battery life. I have been having to recharge this phone on a daily basis, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could blame that on it being a 3G phone, but it isn’t. It is a humble 2.5G phone. Overall, an almost perfect phone (until the iPhone is available to the public) which could do with better battery life.” Link.

PCMag has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl (Cingular) and notes, “I was absolutely satisfied making phone calls, getting personal e-mail, and surfing the Web over the device’s EDGE connection, which can also be used as a PC modem averaging about 90 Kbps. Unfortunately, it seems that Cingular’s BlackBerry system is no longer able to take e-mails off our PC Mag Microsoft Exchange 2000 server through Microsoft Outlook Web Access. As far as I can tell, though, this looks like a Cingular issue, not a Pearl problem. Yahoo! and POP3 mail worked without a hitch. You should definitely make sure the Pearl works with your chosen e-mail system before buying it.” Link.

PCAuthority has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “All of RIM’s killer features are here. Push email (either via BlackBerry Enterprise Server or the BlackBerry Internet Solution, for around $25 per month), Web browsing and a spectacularly stable Java-based OS mean there’s little to differentiate the Pearl from the larger BlackBerrys. In terms of wireless, the only omissions are 3G and WLAN — albeit both notable absentees. Still, GPRS, EDGE, GSM and Bluetooth mean you’ll be able to make full use of the device from almost anywhere. … The Pearl has its faults, but classy design combined with push email make it a very desirable piece of kit. If you need a device for writing short messages, Internet browsing and voice calls, it’s a superb fit.” Link.

Gadgetnutz has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “This is the finest SmartPhone I have every used. Period. It is a great phone, an amazing email device, a capable media player and a wonderful web surfer. The screen is beautiful, the Trackball is a joy to use (much better than a jog dial or D-Pad) and the Suretype keyboard works great. If you want all the multi-media features available - this might not be the best choice. If you want a great phone with the industries best email function, a terrific web experience and a capable media player and camera all bundled in an incredibly sexy package - this is the phone for you. I should also mention that with heavy usage, I was able to get two to three days of solid use before needing a charge. As good or better than the Treo and way beyond the Blackjack and the Q. Now, I don’t often gush like this and I have never been tempted to actually eat the early cancellation fee of my carrier and switch for a device - but I am very tempted. The White BlackBerry Pearl is truly a diamond in the rough world of today’s SmartPhones.” Link.

LaptopMag has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl (AT&T) and writes, “f you’re used to a full QWERTY keyboard, the Pearl’s SureType setup, which squishes two letters onto each key, has a slight learning curve. After sending a few text messages and e-mails, however, we were hooked on its ease and found that even with large fingers we didn’t accidentally press the wrong keys. … Overall, the BlackBerry Pearl is a great choice for anyone looking to stay connected without carrying a bulky device. Its slim design will appeal to consumers and executives alike, and its price tag of $199 (with a two-year contract) will fit most budgets.” Link.

The OCRegister has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “Everything is so small. While the 2.1-inch screen is larger than most cell phones, reading e-mails and documents may cause squinting. I played with it for about a week and I’m still not used to it. But don’t think of this as a BlackBerry. Think of this as a sleek phone with the extra bonus of being a BlackBerry. The BlackBerry-ness takes time to learn and if you don’t want to learn it, you don’t have to.” Link.

Trusted Reviews has a review of the BlackBerry Pearl and writes, “As a business device, it’s clearly the next in the ‘must-have’ line of devices. But there’s a caveat here - old-school users will possibly find the new form factor and controls too much of a jerk away from the previous iterations, and will likely lack the patience required to learn SureType. Where this scores, business wise, is with small businesses - the fact that Vodafone has a number of reasonably priced Blackberry plans; the fact the device is small enough to use as a standard phone rather than a dedicated email device; the fact it’s swanky enough to show off to your mates and colleagues; the fact that it has simple email forwarding without needing an Enterprise server - it’s going to make instant email even more pervasive amongst businesses by growing the marketplace ‘downward’ rather than just serving as a replacement for older handsets still in the pockets of big corporations. In that respect, the Pearl is definitely a winner.” Link.

Update: The BlackBerry Pearl is now available in white.