Offering plenty for both professional and personal aspects of your life, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 is a light and slim smartphone that is full of possibilities.

While most BlackBerries, and indeed most smartphones these days are an oppressive black, the Pearl 8120 is a cloudy silver stainless steel. The lighter shade is complemented by a lightweight build. At 14 millimetres thick and weighing only 91 grams, the Pearl does not feel like a smartphone at all. This combined with a streamline design means that it is very comfortable in your hand and your pocket.

This small stature does come at a cost-BlackBerry have swapped a full QWERTY keyboard for quasi-QWERTY keypad. Each button is shared by two letters, but they are laid out as a regular keyboard. It does sound weird, but it is pretty easy to master. Getting used to this new set up is assisted by the inclusion of SureType predictive text software, which is eerily good at guessing what you are trying to type.

Connectivity is pretty good with the BlackBerry Pearl 8120, although you have to wonder why 3G and HSDPA has been left off the specifications list.  The Pearl does support Wi-Fi, as well as Bluetooth and GPRS/GSM/EDGE. There is also a mini USB port for connecting to a PC and a microSD card slot for transporting data and boosting storage. You can actually access this slot and change your memory cards while the Pearl is still on, a thoughtful design feature that is not in many other handsets.

Other thoughtful additions include a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is great because BlackBerry have stocked the Pearl 8120 with an excellent multimedia player, a 2 megapixel camera and some great applications including one for Facebook.