Rogers and RIM have announced the availability of the affordable BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220, and beginning November 4 customers will be able to grab one for just $49.99. That’s right, Rogers has come in quite a bit lower than the $149 that T-Mobile customers in the US will have to pay. Of course, the Rogers more »

Please check out the comment at the end of the first paragraph. T-Mobile seems to be moving forward with the release of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220and have added a new page on the website for interested buyers to pre-register. As of now, it seems to be just a matter of time before you will more »

Without any official announcement from RIM, the upcoming BlackBerry 8210 and 8220 have both been unveiled by online retailer Expansys. Of course, the 8210 and the 8220 are better know as the KickStart, which marks RIM’s first venture into the clamshell market.

Thanks to their online retail appearance we can confirm they will be featuring an internal 2.6-inch display with a 320 x 240 resolution and external 160 x 128 resolution display. Other features include a 2-megapixel camera with flash and video recording capability, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack and quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) support.

So, we saw the hands-on review come in for RIM’s first venture into the clamshell market and things continue to seem to be pretty promising, that is assuming the price is close to the rumored $49. Now to add a little more tease, the team over at CrackBerry have released a nice (and thorough) 9-minute video of the Kickstart 8220 in action.

Of course caught in the action is the heart of the handset, the OS 4.6, but they also demonstrate some other goodies to include the web browsing, trackball, display, and the large SureType keyboard. Initially, I was not all that excited to see RIM venture into the clameshell style market, but after seeing this in action and shown next to the Pearl, all I can say is that the Pearl had better watch out, because the Kickstart looks very nice.

Continue on to check out the video…

We have seen plenty of leaked images for the upcoming clamshell-styled BlackBerry Kickstart, so I guess seeing an early hands-on report surface should not be all that surprising.

The crew over at CrackBerry were able to get their hands on RIM’s first venture into the world of the clamshell, and while the BlackBerry Bold and Thunder may be stealing some of the recent spotlight, it seems the Kickstart is going to be a solid offering.

A few items to point out is that the display is big, and although not quite the same quality as what is found on the Bold it was noted as “looks good.” The Kickstart 8220, as indicated by the number pattern will feature Wi-Fi, it also has the “next gen” SureType keyboard which was described as “massive” and easy to use, which sounds like it will be a nicer typing experience as compared to the Pearl.