The plus theme has the added functionality of "top 5" apps - when you scroll (or is it "track" ) to the bottom of the screen on the pearl, it pops up a horizontal list of the 5 applications you choose to be at the top of your apps list. Therefore, you don't have to go scrolling through the whole list of application icons to find the one that you want. To me, this made the pearl even more usable as the 8700 with the dimension today theme.