I have been a Blackberry user for forever, I was the first kid on my block to have one. We did beta testing for the first clamshell MobiText units in the 90’s, and I have always been very happy with the devices, I put my old 950 through hell, and the thing would just keep on ticking. Time progressed, and I upgraded to one of the full size units, but handed down my berry to a user who needed basic email functionality, and he used it for a few more years, and the device was retired still functioning, but no longer supported by RIM on the wireless side.
I intentionally skipped the first generation of blackberry phones, I was not impressed with the initial capabilities, and I had the way cool real thin phone that I wasn’t going to swap. We had a couple users with the Gen-1 Blackberry phones, and they weren’t happy, with them, I guess it was the requirement to use a headset, that annoyed them.
I Finely made the jump to an Blackberry phone, after moving away from GSM coverage, and my cool skinny phone no longer worked. Over next 7 years, I went through 3 Blackberry changes, one due to the fact that my company changed providers, device still had limited functionality after service was terminiated, so I used it as a network monitor. The swap provided me with my first 8703e Blackberry, great device, did everything I wanted nice readable screen, and great functionality, and that blackberry would be problem free until I turned it in upon my departure from the company.Prior to my departure, I purchased my own 8703e, for 2 reasons, the primary was that the company I worked for was in the process of being torn apart by the owners and I was not sure that the parent I was going with would continue allowing us to have company berries. The second reason was that I was doing a lot of consulting at the time, and needed some segregation of work and personal stuff.
Ok enough of the background stuff.
After about the first 3 months, the new 8703e started having “issues”, it went through this little spat of needing a hard reset once every other day, a full software reload fixed that problem for a couple months. I start getting calls from others in the company that their Blackberry 8793e is resetting all by itself on a regular basis, some of the symptoms are the same as mine, so I recommend they do a software update on the device, that seems to solve the problem for a while….
So after a few months of relatively flawless operation, my berry starts exhibiting the same behavior, resetting and rebooting randomly, I do a wipe and reload, and 2 days later the device starts doing the reboot thing again, and my battery life is in the cellar. I also start noticing that it starts rebooting a lot as I pull it from the holster. Seems like the Blackberry has a loose connection, and the thing resets when it is pulled out of the holster, set down on a hard surface a little to hard, gets bumped in the console of the car while going over a speed bump, or if you tap it in the right place on the lower right side of the device. Now I could understand it if it was just mine doing this, but it happens that this is the same issue with 4 others in my company, and they are all out of warranty.
I remember when RIM was a rock solid Customer Service company, but those days went away with the IPO…
p.s.
Going to replace the 8703, and I am thinking it wont be with a Blackberry, thinking on making the jump to iPhone, but lets see how many of the rumors are based in truth
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