Digital Trends

"How the heck do you open this thing?" My girlfriend tried to imitate my by-now well-practiced thumb-slide-pop maneuver to open the sleek clamshell Motorola PEBL from T-Mobile ($199.99 after rebates), but couldn't quite get the hang of it. In an exasperated voice, she gave me back the phone after a few fumbled and unsuccessful attempts and exclaimed rhetorically, "What's the point if you can't open it?" Precisely! Industrial designers sometimes get a bit full of themselves, incorporating unusual features not because they should but because they can.

For a product as utilitarian as a cell phone, care should always be taken when inserting a gimmick that could limit functionality. To be sure, the smooth rubberized PEBL feels like no other handset -- the TV commercial in which the phone is meta-morphed from meteorite to river-worn rock, captures the feel of the phone. And once mastered the PEBL's geek-cool sliding cover that pops up when slid down and disengaged from its magnetic hold is kind of addictive. But all this cell style belies the bland cell phone underneath -- plain old GPRS, not EDGE, network compatibility; VGA instead of mega pixel digital camera with no flash; a narrow monochrome instead of square color exterior display. The PEBL performed well, but so do many other far less expensive, admittedly less attractive T-Mobile models.

*Correction 3/17/06: We have received some e-mails from people claiming the PEBL does support EDGE functionality according to the Motorola website. However if you have T-mobile as a service provider, the PEBL provided by them does not support EDGE but GPRS instead. As of this writing the PEBL cannot be purchased from either Verizon or Cingular, solely T-Mobile.