BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Mark Brezinski Published on December 18, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (3.26)
The Pearl took 6.13 seconds to get a song playing. In a world where virtually every phone has a media player shortcut, this is a long time. The path to get there is fairly straight forward: main menu > media > music > choose a song. A quick word of warning to impatient button mashers: repeatedly clicking the trackball will add a little over two seconds to the process. We’d recommend you use a few, expertly-timed clicks for minimal lag.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Pearl 8130 | 6.13 | 3.26 |
| Palm Centro | 3.22 | 6.21 |
| HTC Tilt | 5.47 | 3.66 |
| Sidekick LX | 2.46 | 8.13 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 7.62 | 2.62 |
| Nokia N73 | 4.34 | 4.61 |
Dedicated Music Controls (1.0)
Unfortunately, only the volume keys can be considered dedicated music controls. We define a dedicated music key as something that performs media functionality outside of the media player. There is a new Now Playing option you can access via the menu key which will bring the music player back up. Though this puts the media player close by, it doesn’t provide the ease of a few dedicated buttons.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.8)
The Pearl has a solid music player. Music is divided into title, artist, album, and genre. There is also a search feature available, which will pick up on any full word in any of those categories, which is an amazing feature. Playlists are supported and can be created and edited on the device. Album art also receives a nod, though visualizations aren’t included. There is no equalizer either. The library will automatically update, which is a nice feature. Though it doesn’t have the extra features of more dedicated media handsets, the Pearl provides excellent search functionality and a simple layout.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
Somehow, Verizon didn’t get its hooks into BlackBerry; the Pearl doesn’t have built-in V Cast support.
Streaming (0.0)
The Pearl doesn't support streaming audio of any type.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The Pearl has chosen to ignore the existence of podcasts for its own inscrutable purposes.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The Pearl will easily synchronize via Windows Media Player. The software CD includes a Roxio music synchronization program, but we think WMP is far more straight-forward.
Music Formats and DRM (0.0)
The Pearl will play AAC, Mp3, wav, and WMA files. DRM protected content isn’t supported, so iTunes and Napster consumers are out of luck.
Music Interruption (10.0)
When music is playing and a call comes in, the Pearl behaves just like it should. It pauses the music for the duration of the call, and automatically unpauses the music when the call is over. The only additional feature we would’ve liked to see was a fade-in option. It would help those of us who like loud abrasive music, but who are skittish of sudden loud noises.
Video
Video Software Access (2.87)
It took 6.98 seconds to get a video to play with the Pearl. This is slow, and due mostly to lag, which we encountered every step after clicking on the media shortcut. For a phone as responsive as the Pearl, media presents more loading time than we’d expect.
Cell Phone
Time (sec)
Score
BlackBerry Pearl 8130
6.98
2.87
Palm Centro
3.16
6.33
HTC Tilt
10.18
1.96
Sidekick LX
N/A
0.0
BlackBerry Curve 8320
8.08
2.48
Nokia N73
9.74
2.05
Video Controls (5.0)
The Pearl’s video controls are similar to the music controls. The trackball will highlight the play/pause and stop buttons. You can also highlight the progress bar and slide it to rewind or fast-forward. The volume keys perform their namesake duties. The symbol key will bring up full screen mode, but some of our test videos had black frames around them instead of being a true full screen view.
Video Software & Organization (2.0)
The video software is lacking compared to the music software. Videos are only sorted by “All Video”, or “My Videos” and are organized by title. The search feature is still intact, but it can only search by title. Video software is typically inferior to music software, but we’d still expect more than what the Pearl offers.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
In terms of synchronizing, video and music are the same: use WMP and not the Roxio software.
Video Formats (3.5)
The Pearl only played 3GP files encoded with Mp4, not those encoded with H263. Windows Media Videos were also supported. Amongst the unsupported formats were QuickTime, Real Player and Flash videos.
Video DRM (0.0)
The Pearl won’t support any DRM files.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
The Pearl played back all our test video files, up to 768 kbps. This means all your high quality videos will play back without any starts, fits, or hiccups.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
No online video downloading service is supported.
Video Streaming unscored
As there aren’t any standards for streaming video, we don’t score this section. We do visit a few popular streaming video sites to see if we can get something playing, though. YouTube mobile did, in fact, work. Zoovision appeared to work, but we got playback errors after a few minutes of waiting. Windowsmedia.com also wouldn’t work.
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