BlackBerry's Lustrous Pearl

Palm (PALM Quote) Treos, for example, are good PDAs. Motorola's Q phone does decent video, Nokia's E62 renders good Web views and has a smooth, often fault-free operating system.

But BlackBerrys' true calling is email, and the T-Mobile Pearl is even stronger in that regard than many of its predecessors.

Pearl's email activation is a snap, for example. The IT department simply adds your address to the BlackBerry server; the system automatically finds the phone and synchronizes your contacts wirelessly.

I discovered this to my puzzled surprise within hours of turning on the phone. While studying the new gem, I noticed that a friend in Baltimore was on the line.

Warning: The voice-activated dialer has a side button that is a little too easy to push unintentionally. The phone heard a name, searched my address book and dialed.

This of course is not unique to the Pearl, but the ability of BlackBerry to stock your contact list automatically without a cable connection to your computer is brilliant.

The Pearl won't easily win many old-time BlackBerry fans with its controversial "suretype" keyboard, which squeezes two letters on most of the buttons.

Picture your computer keyboard shrunk by half. Suretype tries to predict the letters and words you are typing. In most cases, not including names and passwords, it does a good job.

Critics rightly point out you can type faster on a conventional qwerty keyboard.

But in defense of this predictive text feature, it saves space, and if you can stop fighting it and simply go with it, you'll manage most typing tasks.