Thursday 3 January 2013

Why The Blackberry Cursor Stops Working

Been given a Blackberry phone for Christmas? All working well at the moment is it? Enjoy it while it lasts because within weeks it will a lump of plastic that you will be taking back to the phone shop because it has stopped working.
Actually, that's not fair, it may last a few months.
I am on my third Blackberry phone in 12 months and that is now currently sitting in a workshop somewhere because once again, the cursor button has stopped working.
I was given a telephone number of the workshop so i could check the progress if i hadn't received it back within 28 days but i phoned them up anyway and asked them 'What is up with the Blackberry phone' because i kept getting a different answer from the phone shop salesmen ranging from sweat off my fingers clogging the button to the ambiguous 'known problem'.
If anyone knows it must be the people who have to fix them so when i asked exactly why they keep breaking, the problem it seems is known, but they are just not doing anything about fixing it.
According to the phone engineer, under the button is a slightly upturned, thin piece of metal so when you press the key down, it makes a connection and moves the cursor around the screen.
In their wisdom, the Blackberry people made that piece of metal thinner in the Blackberry Curve and subsequent mobiles so after a short time the metal strip gets flattened which makes the connection harder to make and human nature is to push the button harder which only flattens it even more until one day, it is not upturned anymore and no connection can be made and off it goes to the engineers who don't actually fix them, they simply 'pull out the old cursor unit and stick in a new one'.
So, i asked, all the helpful advice about pulling the battery, installing the new operating system, sticking tape across the cursor pad or any of those other helpful hints on you tube won't do anything?
All you will have is a Blackberry with a bit of sellotape on it that still won't work or may work again for a week or so and then die said my new friend.
That's the answer then, the only solution when your cursor starts acting up is to take it back to the shop you got it from and get that new cursor unit fitted and at the first opportunity, ditch it for another phone.
The last point is when i asked why a 20 minute job takes 28 days to get fixed, he laughed and said i obviously didn't take out the extra insurance which guarantees your phone is fixed within 7 days which i never but if i had known how bad the Blackberry was going to be, i wouldn't have got one in the first place!     

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