[palomartian]

...Mexican...dbl tapping...

Yeah, lotta that going around.

[Sharke]

The manufacturing quality of most everything is crap these days.

Back home in the UK I still have a Marantz CD player from around 1983. It is built like a tank and still works perfectly. Even the display is flawless. The tray opens and closes smoothly and I swear it could hold a bowling ball. Of course, it weighs a ton. A friend bought a Marantz CD player a few years ago and it was amazing to compare the general build quality. Much cheaper, thinner and flimsier. A couple of years later and the display just stopped working.

The same can be said about the original iPods, the first bunch that came out seemed to be made to a far higher build quality than successive versions. I think part of it is when a new technology comes out that's yet to win the public over, they really go to town on the build quality in order to build up positive opinion. Then, once everyone's flocking for them and they're "must have" items, they figure: why not take things down a few notches and see how much we can shave off the cost of production.

Indeed I remember my first few Nokia cellphones in the 90's, they were built like tanks as well. Really solid units that never went wrong. They don't feel half as well built these days.

Having said that RIM build quality is generally quite good. Not so long back I was attacked on Madison Avenue by a mad driver who jumped out of his car (long story). I had my two dogs with me so was unable to fight back, but did manage to get my 9700 out to dial 911 while the blows rained down. He was so incensed at this that he grabbed my phone and flung it right across Madison as hard as he could. I figured it was in smithereens. Anyway he jumped back in his car at this point and sped off. Unknown to me, he was so mad that he didn't realize he had his Samsung Galaxy in his hand as well when he threw my phone, and so his phone went with it. To my absolute delight, the 9700 was completely intact apart from a slight crack and graze, while the Samsung was totaled.

So I'm a little disappointed to hear of build quality problems with the 9900. I wonder how long before the first dropped unit reports start coming in, lol...that's the ultimate test.

[mssca]

Did you mail the two devices for replacements or handed them personally to a customer service rep? Just curious as your carrier would just swap out a new device without first troubleshooting it and then say that if you were up to no good, here's a big outstanding bill.

I walked in to the Telus store to get the replacement.

[6spd_legend]

Mine was made in Mexico. After having it for 2 days and playing with it non-stop, and also doing a visual inspection upon reading this thread- everything seems to be PERFECT.

[Dlanod]

Completed a tour of the shops in the centre of Glasgow UK today and all the demo ones I looked at had the same issue. Best was in O2 and even that one was lifted at the left hand side. Torches although they seem to be the same design seemed to fair better. Probably due to the more solid surrounding area of the handset.

[dlob0099]

Same issue here.

Have ordered THIRD (!) replacement Bold 9900 from Vodafone UK now.

The sharp edge between the screen and the top menu / trackpad panel is atrocious. It almost seems to slice into my thumb.

Of course Vodafone pretend never to have heard of this problem.

Wonder when they'll wake up to the music and do a proper recall on this one...

[Dlanod]

I didn't try more than one. It's a design flaw and the ones that are flush to start with stand a good chance of going the same way with use as the glue weakens.

The new 9790 videos show this panel and the screen in one piece - and it's touch screen too. I'm waiting for that. Much better design.

[cbreze]

For a flagship device, I would have thought RIM would have better QC.

LOL. Rim's QC="quick crap".

[Broly]

I didn't try more than one. It's a design flaw and the ones that are flush to start with stand a good chance of going the same way with use as the glue weakens.

The new 9790 videos show this panel and the screen in one piece - and it's touch screen too. I'm waiting for that. Much better design.

Mines from Mexico. I am also a hardcore user of my phone, as you could see by my thread which talks about this SMS limit imposed by the OS.

WIth the amount of usage I"ve already put on this badboy, I have NO lifting panel issue. My phone is made in Mexico

[mhw100]

Not a statistical sample but out of 10-12 9900s I've looked at, 6 -8 or so are not flush. I finally found one that is perfect but the trackpad is not properly aligned in the panel hole and the menu key is a little mushy. I'm not going to change it since the non-flush panel is worse than the mushy key and misaligned pad.

[bmpcs]

Same issue here.

Have ordered THIRD (!) replacement Bold 9900 from Vodafone UK now.

The sharp edge between the screen and the top menu / trackpad panel is atrocious. It almost seems to slice into my thumb.

Of course Vodafone pretend never to have heard of this problem.

Wonder when they'll wake up to the music and do a proper recall on this one...

Mine is from Vodafone UK and is ok - (so far).

[Fnord]

1st off you're always going to get more people complaining in a forum than talking about how perfect their device is - which gives a false sense of reality. If you spent time in the Storm 2 forum when it came out you would have thought every phone was defective (individuals returning 5-10 units...). Truth was, at the time, it had the lowest return rate of any Verizon smartphone.

Go to any smartphone forum and people will be complaining about quality (especially iPhone forums). RIM is in no way worse than the others...

My 2 cents.

[mhw100]

1st off you're always going to get more people complaining in a forum than talking about how perfect their device is - which gives a false sense of reality. If you spent time in the Storm 2 forum when it came out you would have thought every phone was defective (individuals returning 5-10 units...). Truth was, at the time, it had the lowest return rate of any Verizon smartphone.

Go to any smartphone forum and people will be complaining about quality (especially iPhone forums). RIM is in no way worse than the others...

My 2 cents.

I agree 100%.

One of the values, at least to me, with any of these phone forums is to alert prospective purchasers to what the known defects are. That way one is educated in what to look for when testing the device in the store. No different than viewing Consumer Reports if you're buying a washing machine. Clearly, someone that is doing their research and reading this thread will not buy a device with a non-flush screen.

Are they all bad? No, and most educated people will realize that if there was a systemic problem there would be a much more vociferous response e.g. attenagate, versus just a few isolated threads which is what I believe the non-flush screen to be. Agreed it appears to be more of a design flaw than a QC issue but at the end of the day the exsitence of that little lip probably doesn't matter.

[funnykindel]

very good response