itting the tail end of a bad year with a high note, Research In Motion (RIM) goes after a dramatically new demographic with The Pearl. The company's innovative little multimedia smartphone - underneath its sexy-cool exterior - is still a BlackBerry. RIM, whose BlackBerry service is the obligatory business sector tool, is aiming their new BlackBerry Pearl straight at the hearts of regular, non-suit consumers.

While the new device is actually classified as a smartphone and not a cellular-wireless handheld, it's still a big deal for Research In Motion because it is the company's first model that supports playing music and displaying video. This slick model is built in the mold of RIM's 7100 series, but much smaller and slimmer - measuring just 4.2" x 1.97" x .57" and weighing only 3.1 ounces. The Pearl has a bright 240-by-260 screen and also features playback of MP3 and AAC music files. It has a stereo headset jack and it is Bluetooth 2.0 compatible.

Thinner than a closed RAZR, the BlackBerry Pearl manages to include a 1.3-megapixel camera, a media player and a slot for a MicroSD memory card to store songs into the wireless email device you've grown to depend on.

To reduce the size of the Pearl in order make it more like the size of an average cell phone, something had to go; that something would be the keypad. The new device uses a customized QWERTY keyboard with two letters on each key, while the SureType technology assists the user at inputting text. Previously seen on the BlackBerry 7100 series, this is intended to be more user-friendly without sacrificing any of the business features that made it popular in the first place - like e-mail and mapping. But those keys are really small.