Vodafone has announced the availability of the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 to its line-up of mobile phones. The new smartphone combines business and multimedia functionality in a 107 x 50 x 14.5 mm, 90 grams mobile device.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 has a TFT display with 65,536 colors and 240 x 260 pixels resolution and a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash and 5x digital zoom. It includes a SureType QWERTY keyboard with 20 keys that, in combination with word recognition software, enable the entire alphabet to be easily accessed. For the multimedia part, the smartphone offers a media player that can be used to watch MPEG4 videos and listen to MP3 files. Media files can be stored on 64 MB of internal memory, that can be further expanded via microSD cards.

"Many Vodafone customers still have a classic BlackBerry handset and a camera phone, which means they carry both handsets around with them. These customers will probably be the first ones to buy the Blackberry Pearl 8100, because it can do both," said Hartmut Kremling, CTO at Vodafone.

The new smartphone supports Vodafone's BlackBerry Push E-Mail Service which automatically notifies users of incoming emails on the handset display and enables users to receive emails at up to ten different accounts. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 is a quadband GSM (850, 900, 1800 and 1900 Mhz) phone and it supports communications with other devices via USB and Bluetooth 2.0. The 900 mAh lithium-ion battery provides users with 3.5 hours of talk time and 360 hours of standby time.

The new BlackBerry Pearl 8100 is now available from Vodafone at prices starting from EUR 139.90.