After RIM's announcement on Monday that an EV-DO-equipped BlackBerry Pearl, the 8130, would be launched on U.S. CDMA carriers by this November, it wasn't much of a surprise to see the Pearl at Verizon Wireless' multi-phone launch event in New York City this week. That doesn't mean we're not interested in taking a closer look, however, as the new Pearl does have a few notable improvements. Most importantly, networking got a shot in the arm and the phone is now a 3G phone, with faster Web browsing (we assume, our demo model wasn't active) and access to VZ Navigator.
The phone won't be able to buy songs from the V Cast music store, but it will feature a 3.5mm headphone jack, just like the BlackBerry Curve. Also, for the CDMA Pearl, RIM has moved the microSD card slot from behind the battery to the side of the phone, a nice little improvement that should save some complaints later.
The new Pearl will launch some time in November for an as-yet-undetermined price that will be competitive with the other BlackBerry Pearl's on the market. Once this announcement hits, we'd guess its probably a matter of hours before Sprint announces a version of their own, if history has been a guide.
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