New Blackberry 8100 Pearl consumer phone

Never been a big fan of Blackberry phones and never understood why anyone would want one. Okay, you can access and read email with it, and their SureType is very user-friendly. But surely you must get a paper brown bag with it when you buy one to put over your head when using your Blackberry in public, cause the thing is so darn ugly!
Now, RIM is trying to get a hold in the consumer market with their new Blackberry Pearl phone. I haven't been able to actually get my hands on one, but MobileBurn has an extensive and interesting review of the Pearl on their site.


My conclusion: it definitely looks better than their business devices (but that's not so hard), but their user interface design really scared me: it's very cluttered and ugly and reminded me of Telnet sessions on a Unix machine. Personally I think good UI design should combine a well worked out interaction design and an attractive graphic design. Furthermore, it doesn't offer anything really exiting. With their 1.3 megapixel camera and polyphonic ringtones this phone should be send back in time to 2004, then it might be cool...