Wednesday, at the CTIA Wireless trade show, Research In Motion (RIM) announced it would be releasing its first clamshell BlackBerry, the Pearl 8220, which will be available on T-Mobile. BlackBerry Pearl is fitted with a 128-by-160 external screen and a 2-megapixel camera at the top.

Flip it open and you will find a high-resolution 320-by-240 screen, which tops the Pearl’s standard 260-by-240 one.

Other features include Wi-Fi, music and video players, Bluetooth and a MicroSD card slot.

No information on the phone’s price or date of release has been given out yet, but it has been speculated that the Pearl 8220 will cost about $200.

RIM’s product comes in two colours, black and red and it also provides users with an application that supports online streaming videos and with one that allows them to sync Apple's iTunes.

In other news, Google has recently launched Google Mobile Apps for BlackBerry, a cluster of the company’s features that includes fast Google search, search history, Google Suggest-the recently rolled out tool aimed at reducing the number of key-strokes for a search, by offering users queries suggestions-and Google Apps support. All of these in just one streamlined application. Not to mention that the app is a free download.

The BlackBerry is RIM’s most famous product, which the company released in 1997. The wireless handheld device known as the smartphone BlackBerry, supporting, among others, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing and web browsing was introduced in 2002. The number of BlackBerry subscribers has been reported to have gone over 14 million in April this year.