If you liked the look of the Blackberry Pearl, but wish it had the proper QWERTY thumb board, with each key dedicated to a single letter, unlike the Pearl which used the ‘SureType’ system of combining two letters to each key, the BlackBerry 8800 is the one you’ve been waiting for.

It offers the radical trackball that so wowed the world when the Pearl first debuted, and equally maintains the slim and trim lines and design style of the Pearl that keeps the Blackberry 8800 on a level footing with equally slim but Windows powered smartphones from Motorola with the Q and Samsung with the BlackJack.

The trackball is wonderful to use, and even has the happy side benefit of giving left handed users a control system that sits underneath the screen in the mid-way point, instead of forcing left handed users to use the scroll wheel formerly only on the right hand side of older units.

The screen is 2.5-inches in size, has a 320x240 resolution and can display 65,000 colors – considerably less than some smartphones, such as the Nokia N95 which can reportedly display 16 million colors. But for most business and consumer uses, 65,000 colors is enough for now and matches the iPod Video’s 65,000 color ability, too.

As you’d expect, the unit retains all of the push email and other features that BlackBerries are well known for delivering, from Exchange and other corporate email systems, to POP3 email to access your home email account.

Interestingly, the 8800 offers GPS capabilities, like the previous 8700 model, helping to set the trend (along with other cell phone companies) that GPS will soon be a standard feature for high-end models. But instead of being a free service, you need to pay Cingular (and new owner AT&T) US $5.99 per month to be navigated to 10 destinations per month.

Think you’ll use the GPS function more often than that? Prepare to pony up US $9.99 per month for unlimited destination entries. That’s a bit steep, especially considering Nokia, with the N95, is offering GPS totally free, and is even releasing GPS software to work on other Series 60 phones and Windows Mobile smartphone devices.

There’s also a fee you need to pay for ‘Push to Talk’. The circuitry is built-in to allow it, but you’ll be paying an extra US $10 to $20 per month to access the service, depending on the cell phone plan you’re currently on.

As expected, there’s a media player built-in, whose memory you can supplement by adding in a Micro SD card. BlackBerry are still making the mistake that Nokia used to make in this area, with the Micro SD card slot hidden under the battery. The media player plays MP3, AAC and WMA music files, while video support includes MP4 and WMV.

Bluetooth stereo streaming to wireless headphones is not supported. This is known as the A2DP Bluetooth profile and is already common on competing smartphones with more serious mp3 players, like many of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones and the Music Editions of Nokia’s N-series phones.

When it comes to connectivity, there’s no Wi-Fi or 3G – just support for EDGE. It’s faster than GPRS, but it’s not 3G. Still, it should be more than good enough for email, which is still the BlackBerry’s primary killer function after all these years despite all the extra add-ons.

BlackBerry does have 3G and EVDO capable models, but we might have to wait for an 8900 before the new slim range is 3G enabled.

There’s also the camera we mentioned previously. Omitting the camera is usually a decision made by phone manufacturers at the request of businesses who don’t want their staff to have cameraphone capabilities on company provided equipment. Once again, we might need to see an 8900 or even 9000 model to get this feature back.

The 8800's battery will last for 5 hours of talk time and up to 22 days of standby time, with the unit available on a 2 year contract for US $299.95 after a mail-in rebate, and is the 'sexiest' Blackberry for business yet!