So I haven’t posted anything in a while but rest assured I am alive and well.

Today I have a little surprise for everyone (unless you read before you click). I managed to get my mitts on a BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 (some of you may know it as a Kickstart, and that is what I will be calling it). While it was left in my, ummm, care, I managed to take it apart. The only thing was that I didn’t have the time to take the screen apart too, sorry guys. I did what I could in one hour, without laving any marks or getting caught.

So I will post the pics now and at the bottom of this post I will have a very brief write up with my thoughts on this new device.

Maybe because this is a pre-production unit (at least I hope it is) they decided to use really cheap feeling plastic. After using a BlackBerry 8820 and the Bold I was surprised with the build quality. I wouldn’t have thought Research in Motion would do that, but then I remembered this is not a device to compete with the iPhone but it is targeted at the casual emailer. You know the type, he notices you using your BlackBerry and decides it is very imperative that he checks his email too.

The display hinge was also very loose, but this is typical of flip phones, so I won’t hold it against RIM.

I obviously didn’t have the device long enough to test the battery life, but I would assume it is inline with all other BlackBerrys, in the neighbourhood of 4-5 hours of talk time (rated, not real).

If you loved the original BlackBerry Pearl 8100/8110/8120/8130 and you yearned for a version that was a flip, RIM has the answer to your craving. Will I be buying one… No. I couldn’t stand the original Pearl and I am not impressed with this one.

One final thing, RIM isn’t calling this by the code name ‘kickstart’ and that is a shame. It really irritates me when the code name is way more apt a name than the one the marketing ‘geniuses’ come up with.

If you came here directly from another site, no problem you are welcome here, but you might also want to look at two other tear downs I have done recently:

Motorola VA76r
Sony Ericsson K850i