After months of spy shots and speculation, the first flip BlackBerry made its expected announcment today at CTIA, slated for a Fall release (previous talk had been pointing to a launch this September). T-Mobile is the only carrier explicitly mentioned, but we’ve seen some pretty compelling evidence that it’ll be coming to Rogers as well. To avoid confusion with existing BlackBerry Pearls, the 8220 will be going by the monicker BlackBerry Pearl Flip, which is easy enough to remember, but not quite as snazzy as the old Kickstart codename it used to go by. Main features include:
* 240 x 320 internal display, 128 x 160 external display
* Quad-band EDGE (no 3G, boo)
* Wi-Fi (still waiting on the BlackBerry 8210 for GPS)
* Four hours talk time, 14 days standby
* External microSDHC slot
* 3.5mm headphone jack
BlackBerry faithful have mostly been hesitant of the Flip’s size, but early reviews have been a-o-k with it. The trackball is considerably more recessed than previous BlackBerrys in order to account for the top portion, but that’s something even the most diehard BlackBerry user could get over in time. On the whole the Flip is being pitched as a fun consumer-end device, a market segment RIM’s been hounding since the launch of the first Pearl two years ago (almost to the day). Check out the Flash site for the BlackBerry Pearl Flip to peruse all of its features.
