Hi everyone! Let me just preface this post with a declaration of "love" for BlackBerry phones. I started out with the Pearl for about 4 months and about 3 weeks ago switched to the 8320 Curve.
My post is this: while I absolutely love the wifi/uma, bigger screen, better camera, and full qwerty keyboard & definitely don't regret upgrading, has anyone else out there in the CrackBerry universe had problems with typing on the Curve vs the Pearl/8800? (From what I understand, the Pearl and 88xx series have the same type of keys.). With the Pearl, it took me about 2 weeks to be able to type pretty fast. With the Curve, I find it still quite hard to type fast & without spelling errors due to the EXTREMELY small keys. The Pearl unfortunately shared letters on keys, but at least they were bigger. If the 88xx series had a camera, I would've gotten that one.
I got my 8100 Pearl in March, I joined here soon afterwards. I had massive problems with the Pearl keypad. I have a bunch of bananas for fingers. I hated the keyboard and I finally went out an bought an 8310 on ebay.
I am super happy with the 8310's keyboard. It is a different world but, funny thing, I have now gotten used to the 8100 kepad. I can type almost as fast on that as I could on my old Sony-Ericsson K770i regular phone.
Do one of two things, stick with it and it will get better or, buy a Curve - you'll love it.
I have had my Curve since February. After a couple of weeks, I was able to type pretty well on the Curve's keyboard. I have typed on my neice's Pearl a few times, and I think it would take me a little longer to get used too. I write a lot, and I'm always typing ideas in the memo pad, and I am getting pretty fast. I paid attention to a lot of common errors I made (like typing wheb for when) and I made shortcuts in the autotext for the ones that I had popping up regularly, and this makes it go a little faster.
I've used a pearl a little - seems to work best for me if you ignore the screen, bang away at what you want to type and then let the thing figure it out. I hated it personally. I love my curve's keyboard - learning curve (no pun intended) was about 5 minutes. Trying the 8800 at the store, I see what everyone was ******** about with the non-spacing on the keys and greatly preferred the curve's 'chiclets' to the flat ones all squished together. It represents the best compromise I've seen so far between form factor and a usable keyboard for me.
