So, what’s the latest buzz?
"The Blackberry is a service and an application  and it’s also a phone," said Louie Villanueva, GlobeSolutions enterprise group product manager, at the recent launch of its latest offering, the BlackBerry Pearl. "The service enables people to receive their e-mail."
I got an opportunity to check out the BlackBerry Pearl recently. And I was quite happy with it. It was most helpful when I was on the road and a columnist would text me to ask if we got her column. My answer would be yes because the Blackberry Pearl phone (after I had registered my e-mail address on the Web) notified me each time I got an e-mail.
Great.
But BlackBerry does not replace personal e-mail  what it does is facilitate the receiving of e-mail so that if you are mobile, you will receive a notification that your e-mail is there. Nope, the BlackBerry does not replace the notebook computer or desktop PC. And the device has become so sleek; it’s no longer the chunky-looking, calculator-effect BlackBerry of the past. It is now just like one of those stylish cellphones  and light, too.
Research in Motion (RIM), the developer of BlackBerry wireless solutions, has worked with Globe for the past three years. And it is GlobeSolutions, the corporate wireless group of Globe Telecom and Innove Communications, which has made the new BlackBerry Pearl available to corporate and individual customers. This latest BlackBerry handset is packed with features such as a digital camera, multimedia capabilities and an expandable memory slot, making it a great choice for both work and leisure. With the small, sleek and stylish BlackBerry Pearl, corporate and individual customers stay connected to the office through the BlackBerry Internet Service and BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
"We are glad to work with RIM and we are excited to offer the new BlackBerry Pearl to our corporate customers. This small, innovative and stylish wireless device, the latest addition to our portfolio of BlackBerry handsets, puts together business and leisure so that all a corporate individual would need is one mobile phone  the BlackBerry Pearl," Innove enterprise business group head Jesus C. Romero said. "It is the phone that you can rely on for work as it enables you to get your e-mail from anywhere and keeps you connected to the office. It also has a 1.3-megapixel camera so you can take pictures and instantly send these to family and friends, a media player so you can enjoy your favorite music and videos, and an expandable memory slot to allow storage of music, pictures and videos. Corporate individuals won’t need to carry two or three phones anymore for their business and personal use," he added.
Villanueva explained that, from a corporate perspective, there are two things that a BlackBerry does really well. The first is security. This means that all your e-mail is encrypted and secure. And, second, it does compression very well.
"If you were to configure your Nokia phone to download your e-mail, you would have to pay a lot. But Blackberry compresses the e-mail straight from the server," Villanueva added. "If you receive an HTML e-mail that is about 20KB, it would cost a lot. But what BlackBerry does is it converts the HTML text so that you only receive about one kilobyte worth of text from the original 20KB file. If someone sends you a big JPEG file of 100KB, on other applications you would have to click the download attachment on the settings. If you do that, the whole file will be downloaded. What the BlackBerry service does is it gives you the first five or six KBs as a thumbnail so that you can view it."
Since GlobeSolutions handles the corporate group of the top 5,000 companies, their thrust is to provide solutions. RIM or BlackBerry is the number one mobile e-mail platform in the world. As of last year, they are probably hitting eight to 10 million subscribers.
Yup, that’s a lot of customers.
I am among those who would not have been initially impressed with the BlackBerry Pearl because it comes across as a serious phone. I also had to relearn how to text pressing a new set of keys. As a matter of fact, it took me about two days to get the hang of texting on the phone. But, the fact that I was always notified of my e-mail was really cool. I did not have to see the whole text, I just had to know that the e-mail had arrived. Now, that’s a big plus for me.
Traditionally, BlackBerry users were the decision makers, or at least people on the executive level. That is no longer true today; there are so many more people who always need to stay in touch with the office and know what important e-mail has come in for them, just like people doing sales or field personnel.
Villanueva said that statistics have shown that workers spend an average 53 minutes a day reading e-mail, catching up and replying. "Imagine if you could save that time by knowing what e-mail you have while you’re in the car or while you’re on your way to a meeting or while you’re waiting for a meeting. You can see what has to be done and then plan your day even before you get to the office," he noted.
The Blackberry Pearl is the first Blackberry that looks like a cellphone. It is also the first Blackberry with a camera. BlackBerry is moving more towards consumers who are people in professions other than the corporate world. In the US, one of their endorsers is Nina Garcia, fashion editor of Elle magazine. She is one person who always needs to be connected and also needs a stylish phone. The Pearl is Blackberry’s offering to this segment of their users.
Its users can also create their own unique BlackBerry e-mail addresses and manage all their e-mail accounts directly through the BlackBerry device.
For corporate customers, BlackBerry Enterprise Server software tightly integrates with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise and works with existing enterprise systems to enable secure, push-based wireless access to e-mail and other corporate data.
The BlackBerry Enterprise Server is the complete wireless solution for the enterprise. It provides wireless access to communications and information, including e-mail, corporate data, instant messaging, phone, Internet access, SMS and MMS, and organizer capability.
This service is flexible, secure, easy to deploy and manage, reliable and reasonably priced, making it the leading wireless solution for connecting mobile professionals. Powered by these solutions, the BlackBerry Pearl keeps corporate and individual customers connected so they stay on top of their work and at the same time enjoy their leisure time with its new, exciting multimedia features.
The BlackBerry Pearl also features a media player and stereo headset jack so users can enjoy their favorite music and videos on the go. It has a 64MB flash memory built in and supports expandable memory with a microSD card slot to allow storage of music, pictures and videos.
It includes a responsive trackball that makes vertical and lateral scrolling fast and easy. Dedicated "menu" and "escape" keys on either side of the trackball, along with contest-sensitive menus, make navigation instinctive, smooth, and true to the famous user experience of the BlackBerry solution. It comes with a QWERTY keyboard for quick and easy typing and dialing, features voice-activated dialing, supports polyphonic, MP3 and MIDI ring tones, and has a large, ultra-bright, high-resolution display.
"I have come to rely on my BlackBerry so much that when I had to go for a 12-hour period without my phone, it was hard. It is like walking out of the house naked," Villaneuva added. "I would even give up smoking. My cigarettes are a vice. I don’t see the BlackBerry as a vice, it is a necessity because I have come to depend on it so much."