BlackBerry's Lustrous Pearl

As for Internet speeds, the EDGE technology, while fine for email, crawled on the Web, taking up to 30 seconds to deliver a page.

The blisteringly slow wait time was a big disincentive to attempting quick searches. With 3G widely available in most cities, there's no reason to keep Pearl in the slow lane.

But the Pearl keeps you happily distracted with numerous pleasant surprises.

Among the bonus features is a standby/mute button on the top of the phone.

There are certain times when an easy-to-find kill switch can be handy.

Also, the memory potential is huge.

The phone takes a micro SD card, which allows plenty of storage for pictures and songs.

Unfortunately, the flash memory card slot is under the battery.

Another crowd pleaser: The Pearl's T-Mobile service, a unit of Deutsche Telekom (DT), supports OZ, an instant-messaging application that allows AOL IM, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger to work on the phone.

(AT&T's (T) Cingular, by the way, also offers the Pearl.)

Thankfully, the Pearl is set up so you can download applications to the phone.

Google Maps, for example, was so surprisingly useful and cheap (free) that it may get you to think twice about any plans to buy a stand-alone GPS device for hundreds of dollars.

The Pearl will have a half-year jump on Apple's (AAPL) hotly anticipated iPhone, scheduled for delivery in June.

The iPhone, an all-in-wonder device, will likely capture a big portion of the smartphone spending this year and take some of the luster off the Pearl.

As a camera, the Pearl is still a cell phone with very grainy images, and as a music player it offers an awfully small challenge to iPod.

Apple's iPhone will attract a crowd, but a whole new generation of avid mobile email fans will also find out what all the BlackBerry fuss is about with a satisfying Pearl fix.

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