Tuesday 7 August 2012

Cursing The Blackberry Stuck Cursor

I got myself a Blackberry Curve in January and took it back to the shop in April as it had began doing a strange thing where the cursor shot to the left and went flying up the screen which made it impossible to text or even navigate around the phone.
A very helpful assistant said it was a problem with the trackball, and after pulling out the battery and a few restarts, apologised and gave me a replacement.
Fast forward 3 months and the same thing happened again with the cursor taking on a life of it's own and a new problem where the screen just froze so back i went again and explained to the assistant what had happened and how this was the second time on two different phones. A few more resets and pulling out the battery the assistant called over his manager who did the same thing and mumbled something about 'this happens all the time with Blackberries'.
After a bit of questioning, it appears that the trackballs on the Blackberries are faulty and the only way he has found to correct it is to stick a piece of tape over the trackball. Apparently this blocks out some of the light which confuses it and stops it working.
I have 17 months left on my contract and yet another Blackberry, the third, but for some reason i can't interact with my blog through it which was part of the reason i plumped for it from the large array of phones in the shops but apparently that is due to my settings and not due to the phone.
I met up with a former colleague for breakfast this weekend and when she went to put my number in her phone, i noticed it was a Blackberry Bold, a later version of my Curve and across the trackball was a piece of sellotape. Apparently her cursor had done the same thing shooting left and upwards and she was told by another Blackberry user that the only way to cure it was to stick a piece of sellotape over the trackball, and it had worked okay ever since.
So Blackberry and the phone shops are selling mobile phones that they know are faulty and the only way they know to fix them is to stick a piece of sticky
tape over the cursor button? Much easier and cheaper for Blackberry than fixing the problem with the trackball i guess.
Unless the salesman in the shop is very easy on the eye and you don't mind popping down to see him every few months, i don't think i will be recommending a Blackberry to anyone.

7 comments:

Cheezy said...

My mate worked for Nokia just before they joined up in unholy alliance with Microsoft and he told me that the pressure of competition (mainly from iPhone of course) meant that several of their phones were released many months before they really should have been (if they had gone through the usual stringent QA process)... and this is the reason why these phones were generally a load of junk (certainly compared to how reliable Nokias used to be)...

Maybe much the same thing is happening at Blackberry?

Anonymous said...

If you looked on the internet for blackberry reviews before you bought one you would have known the blackberry trackpad has always been a problem and they don't seem willing or able to fix it.

Anonymous said...

uhh, RIM is toast. dump it and transition to apple or droid...

q

Lucy said...

I wouldn't be surprised at all if they pushed it out before it was ready but to continue when they know there is a fault is really shoddy. It still isn't letting me write on here either despite following their instructions which is annoying as i am off camping for a week soon and wanted to carry on posting.

I did read that Blackberry are struggling q and i say good if this is how they act. I am stuck with it for another 17 months though so can't junk it yet but the day may contract is up i will cancrel it.

Jody said...

I purchased a BB 9300 about a fortnight ago and two days later I started having problems with my trackpad. Like yours it started moving on its own to the right of the screen. I will try the tape over the scrollpad but otherwise I don't know what to do short of saying BB is not all that great if they can't figure out this problem and fix it.

Anonymous said...

My trackpad gets stuck, and won't comply unless I press it down very hard several times. Any fix for this?

Lucy said...

The only fix i know is the tape over the scrollpad to stop the cursor jumping about but there have been a few times when the phone had just froze but i have found turning it off and back on again has got it going.