Blackberry - Pearl 8130 Cell Phone Review

I liked this phone a lot at the beginning.  It was quick and flexible and the SureType was a lot more usable than the the T9En of my old phone. The phone itself has excellent reception which comes in handy when in the woods. Also, it stands up to wear pretty well. Mind you I kept it reasonably protected (ziplock bag in my clothing bag), but it made it my whole thru-hike on the appalachian trail. Impressive considering I didn't buy it for durability. It was submitted to a lot of heat, moisture and cold. The moisture had the biggest impact as my track ball light went out but has come back dim. All in all I love this phone as a phone. There are however a few cons. If you're a big texter, the SureType is certainly nice, however it doesn't descriminate between typos and words when adding them to your dictionary. I might suggest that RIM change it to wait until the text is sent before adding words to the dictionary. This can be a pain because if you don't regularly clean out your personal dictionary, SureType will a lot of time pick the typos which can be frustrating when trying to send a quick text, or of you are in the middle of an important dicussion. Also, the phones memory management features will delete all of your text messages if you fill up the device's memory. This includes unread texts. However it won't ditch your saved texts. I have had several times in which my new texts were repeatedly deleted in a day because i had taken too many pictures. If you're looking for a good all around phone, and aren't so much worried about texting this one is a great one for you, however if you are a texter I would consider moving to a full QWERTY keyboard, and something that wont delete your unread messages.