BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220

The new BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 smartphone for T-Mobile USA. Known across the internet by its code name of "KickStart", the Pearl Flip is RIM's first shot at making a folder style device. This initial version of the Pearl Flip has been tailored to suit the needs of T-Mobile USA customers, and comes equipped with WiFi-based MA support for T-Mobile's @Home service, though it lacks the ability to work on T-Mobile's newly launched 3G network.

This quad band GSM/EDGE compatible cell phone weights 102g (3.6oz) and measures 99mm x 48mm x 18mm (3.9" x 1.9" x 0.7") in size when folded closed.

It has twin displays, a first for a BlackBerry, and each is capable of automatically adjusting its brightness based on ambient light levels.

The external display can be used for viewing phone status information or even for previewing text or email messages without needing to open the phone, while the QVGA resolution main display offers the full BlackBerry experience that users expect. Other features on the Pearl Flip include Bluetooth 2.0 support, speaker independent voice dialing, and a large 20 key SureType hybrid QWERTY style keyboard with predictive text input.

The Pearl Flip has a 2 megapixel camera and full music player application that are backed up by a microSD card slot that supports cards as large as 16GB in size. RIM has also included a new full HTML capable web browser on the Pearl Flip.

Lastly, this new smartphone ships with DataViz's Documents To Go software pre-loaded, which means that Pearl Flip users can not only view Microsoft Office docs, but actually edit them, too. The RIM BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 comes equipped with a 900mAh battery that should be good for up to 4 hours of talk time or 14 days of standby time when it starts shipping this Fall. T-Mobile will announced pricing and availability information for the Pearl Flip 8220 at a later time.