You should know better…do your research. However, ‘”bluehorseshoe loves the Verizon Pearl.”

Seriously, it’s a good phone. By far faster on the data (over TMO or AT&T), reception is solid for the most part (they all have issues in dark areas), and is quite reponsive when selecting applications, etc. No delay time. If I had to complain about one thing, and it’s the only thing I can think of…it would be the track ball. Not sure if it’s an improvement from the previous track ball. I personally prefer the older version. Camera and Video are good. Keyboard is an improvement, keys feel solid. Tethering is easy and speedy, reception has been fine and been doing it via bluetooth. I’d highly recommend the phone.

There’s my quick summary.

I think MP3 phones cannot compete with dedicated MP3 players for those folks who want to carry huge amounts of music/video on them at all times. From a pure storage standpoint, with SD cards maxing out at 16GB (assuming your phone can handle such cards), a phone can only approach the capacity of the “low end” of iPods/Zunes/Zens. What doubly sucks for BIS users is that a lot of IT departments lock out media card use. >:-(

For those folks who don’t need that much capacity and/or BB users who can get by using the onboard memory, I think the phone rises or falls as a viable option based on how easy and cheap it is to get songs onto the phone and manage the songs themselves. And that, of course, can depend on phone manufacturer, OS, carrier or all of the above.

So while I like the media player on my Curve, I’m barred by IT policy from adding sufficient storage capacity for it to serve as an iPod replacement. That’s why I’m carrying an iPod Touch as well.

Perhaps the rumored BB 9xxx can meet all of my desires……

And I dont particularly care for itunes because
a. it is a system hog
b. i dont own an ipod
and
c. i dont buy music online.
although i must admit it is a formidable 1 stop shop for music and video that no other content provider has matched.

I dont need a device that does every single thing I want done, especially when it does many of those features at a low level, or does the thing its primarily suppose to do (like be a phone) poorly.

thanks for the in-depth analysis on the Pearl.

It will only get better for Apple and worse for the competition. Imagine a few years down the road, when there may be a $150 iPhone that may be better than the current version today. Look at what’s happened with the evolution of the iPod, and then extrapolate similar progress to the iPhone in terms of design and price.