NEW DELHI, INDIA: Airtel and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced the launch of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 smartphone in India. Priced at Rs.21,990 the smartphone is now available at Airtel authorized channels nationally.

The new BlackBerry Pearl Flip smartphone harnesses the power of the BlackBerry platform and packs a wide range of useful features into a sleek flip design. Its spacious keyboard allows easy typing and dialing and the flip design opens to a large, vibrant internal display and provides the satisfying finality of ending a call by closing the phone. Customers will also appreciate the smartphone's external display for previewing calendar reminders, email, text messages and phone calls at a glance.

"The BlackBerry Pearl Flip is a powerful, compact smartphone equipped to deliver a wide range of applications," said Mr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Mobile Services, Airtel. "This continues to reinforce our commitment to enhance and deliver the best communication experience to our users with the latest BlackBerry smartphones from Airtel."

The combination of RIM's powerful mobile email solution and rich multimedia capabilities, together with support for text messaging, picture messaging, enhanced Web browsing and built-in Wi-Fi, makes the BlackBerry Pearl Flip ideal for balancing a busy lifestyle. Customers can easily share pictures, check the latest sports scores and post on social networking sites, including Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace.

"This innovative smartphone offers the full power of the BlackBerry platform with advanced communications and multimedia features in a new handset design that is fun and stylish," said Ms. Frenny Bawa, Vice President, India, Research In Motion. "Together with Airtel, we are very pleased to expand the choice of BlackBerry smartphones in India with the new BlackBerry Pearl Flip."

The BlackBerry Pearl Flip smartphone provides an advanced multimedia experience including a 2 megapixel camera with digital zoom, flash and video recording, stereo Bluetooth support, and an easily accessible expandable memory card slot for up to 16GB of additional storage per card.

Key features of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip from Airtel includes the following:

* First BlackBerry smartphone to come in the popular flip design.
* Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) supporting extended data coverage and fast Web browsing.
* Enhanced SureType keyboard for easy text entry and phone dialing.
* Support for text messaging, picture messaging, popular instant messaging services, personal email (access up to 10 supported email accounts), and corporate email.
* 2 megapixel camera with digital zoom, built-in flash and video recording.
* Advanced media player for music, video and pictures with full-screen video playback.
* Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP/AVRCP) and 3.5mm stereo headset jack.
* Media management software including the new BlackBerry® Media Sync application making it quick and easy to sync iTunes digital music onto the handset.
* Enhanced HTML browser for high-performance browsing with desktop-style depiction.
* Internal QVGA 2.4-inch diagonal display, 320 x 240 pixels and supports 65,000 colors.
* 1GB microSD card included.
* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE/Wi-Fi network support including support for international roaming.
* Dimensions (LxWxD): 101mm x 50 mm x 17.5 mm
* Weight (including removable battery): Approximately 102 grams