Krakow: No Excuse for Broken BlackBerries

My Blackberry is broken. Turns out I'm not alone.

The handset in question is a T-Mobile BlackBerry 8820 made by Research in Motion (RIMM Quote). This BlackBerry makes and receives phone calls the normal, cellular way and also allows unlimited phone calls via Wi-Fi, when it is available, for a small, flat, monthly fee. For me, that meant seamless cell phone usage indoors and out.

I know this handset doesn't have 3G or a camera inside, but I love it. Minor quirks aside, it is the test device I've chosen to depend on day and night, near and far, here and abroad. You get the idea.

But when I tried to use the phone last week, I couldn't move the cursor. The rolling trackball no longer rolls in the vertical plane (up and down). Horizontally (left and right), it moves a little. Needless to say, I began to panic.

Broken BlackBerry Blues

I thought maybe the roller-ball mechanism was dirty. I tried rolling the ball back and forth and up and down. A lot. Then I blew air around the ball to see if I could dislodge the grit inside. Then I tried compressed air. No luck with that either.

Since TheStreet.com is a BlackBerry shop (that's what we all use to access our mobile mail) I asked our help desk if they could help. When I told them my problem they asked how old the phone was. After checking with T-Mobile (the 8820 was officially released on March 24, 2008) I told them: "Six months old."