BlackBerry Pearl 8220, also known as BlackBerry KickStart – the first ever clamshell smartphone created by Research in Motion – will apparently be more expensive than initially rumored. More exactly, Rogers Wireless, Canada's largest mobile carrier, seems to have set the price of Pearl 8220 to $149.99 with a contract agreement for three years.

 

While we’re not talking about a hefty price here, it’s still three times higher than the $49 that the phone was said to sell for, on contract. The new price is not confirmed by Rogers (the carrier has not even confirmed the release of Pearl 8220). However, according to recently leaked images that CrackBerry has published, Rogers has already printed promo materials for the BlackBerry flip smartphone – and as you can see, the $149.99 price tag is pretty clear.

 

If the new Pearl indeed hits Canada for $149.99, this price will be similar to the one that Rogers is currently charging for the Pearl 8110 and 8120 models. For the moment, there is no word on the free-of-contract price of RIM's latest Pearl, but this might be of $399, so as to match the ones of the older Pearls.

 

Costs aside, in case you don't know yet what the 8220 has to offer, here are its features: a 240 x 320 pixel internal display, a 128 x 160 pixel external screen, a SureType QWERTY keypad (similar to the ones of the Pearl 8110 and 8120 models, but bigger – hence easier to use), trackball navigation, a 2 Megapixel camera with flash, a 3.5mm headset jack, 80MB of internal memory and, of course, a new BlackBerry OS.

 

The release date of BlackBerry Pearl 8220 is not known, but it shouldn't be long before Rogers announces it (hopefully, there won't be any delays, like in the case of BlackBerry Bold's release).

 

Besides the fact that it will soon be available in Canada, BlackBerry Pearl 8220 will also hit the US market, presumably via T-Mobile, for a price that has lots of chances to resemble the Rogers one.