Determined to develop one of the smallest and lightest smartphones in the world while staying true to the iconic BlackBerry user experience, Research In Motion today announced its latest innovation in mobile handsets - the BlackBerry Pearl. The BlackBerry Pearl comes complete with digital camera, multimedia capabilities and an expandable memory slot for the first time, while continuing to provide the industry leading BlackBerry experience that users have come to love.

Beneath its sleek and stylish exterior, which measures just 4.2" x 1.97" x .57" and weighs only 3.1 ounces, the BlackBerry Pearl is a quad-band GSM/GPRS and EDGE-enabled mobile application powerhouse delivering the fast performance of the latest generation BlackBerry handset platform.

The built-in 64MB flash memory is now expandable with a MicroSD card, giving users plenty more storage for music, pictures, videos, and data files.   

The BlackBerry Pearl comes with features including Speaker Independent Voice Recognition for Voice Activated Dialing (VAD), support for polyphonic, mp3 and MIDI ring tones, and intuitive call management features such as smart dialing, conference calling, speed dialing and call forwarding.  It also features a speakerphone and Bluetooth 2.0 for use with hands-free headsets, car kits and other Bluetooth peripherals such as a GPS receiver. BlackBerry Desktop Software synchronization via Bluetooth is also supported.

The BlackBerry Pearl also comes with a newly enhanced version of RIM's SureType QWERTY keypad technology. The handset is supported on BlackBerry Internet Service as well as BlackBerry Enterprise Server, with a new set of IT policy controls on the latter to allow IT departments to administer camera and expansion memory settings on corporate handsets.

Featuring a 1.3 megapixel camera with built-in flash and 5x digital zoom, users can snap a picture and instantly share it with friends and family by email, MMS or BlackBerry Messenger. Photos can also be set as caller ID images, and can be easily transferred between the handset and a computer using the included USB cable.