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We recently got to test a BlackBerry Pearl in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a Verizon XV6800 in Toronto. We're happy to report both smartphones made it through our little international jaunt in good standing.

A quirk we discovered with the AT&T BlackBerry was that the shortcut of dialing one's own phone number to access voice mail didn't work. We're not sure why that is. Unfortunately, our device isn't set to activate voice mail by holding down the 1 key, so we couldn't test that strategy. Otherwise, phone calls were clear and email downloading continued uninterrupted north of the boarder.

The Verizon 6800 also succeeded with Canadian operations. A reminder, friendly but a little irritating, popped up every time we sought an email download to alert the user to additional charges for roaming. You'd want to be familiar with your data plan, its roaming charges, and any international considerations before going wild up north.

But once we accepted the reminder, downloads happened smoothly. They did not, however, happen automatically as we have them set to do at home.

With the XV6800's Wi-Fi option, you could likely avoid those roaming chargers if you were close to a hotspot in Canada. We didn't hit any free Wi-Fi zones with the device, but it's worth keeping in mind.