[Apothegm]

Read every single one of the posts. Nice to see that BlackBerrys come out with heads held high, so to speak, after all sorts of unfortunate circumstances.

I used to uphold that BlackBerry phones are like bricks - they have the functionality of bricks, but are also as hard as bricks to bust. I changed that thinking for three reasons.

1) If you drop a brick, you will severely dent a corner or an edge. If you drop a BlackBerry, you probably will not dent anything.

2) BlackBerry are making headway with their new phones. In my experience, phones have had hardware issues for the first 6 months after release, software issues for the first year after release. That might actually change with BB 10. If it does not, I will just dub my present mentality the triumph of hope over reason.

3) Anyone who has handled a 9860 on OS 7.1 knows it is a thing to behold. It is, arguably, an even better business phone than the others due to the large screen (yes, calendar, I am looking at you). These are not devices of years ago, but the latest for organised, productive people (not pointing any fingers at anyone such as *cough*iPhone users*cough*). So I was wrong. But I am glad to have been wrong.

[gjohnsto]

bb 9530... i know, i know... anyway, that thing is a tank. dropped it more times than i can count. i remember the first time i thought i wrecked it - was golfing at predator ridge and left the storm in the drink holder, had gin and tonics in the other one, figured the drink holders had holes in the bottom. they didnt. the phone took a full on liquor bath in g'n't, dried it out, worked like a charm.
after that, i decided my phone was indestructible, so stopped baby sitting it. it took two more liquor baths and continued strong.
when i decided i wanted a 9780 i really stopped caring. walked in on my friends having a durability contest with their feature phones. they were carefully dropping their phones on the floor from waist height, so i went ftw and threw the storm over hand against a wall across the room assuming i'd kill it and get a new 9780 - but, blackberry storm dont give a $h**. sure she turned off, but i just put the battery back in, the door back on and fired it back up and away she went.
finally, a a few weeks later i took it up skiing at red mtn over new years, and skied with it in a pocket sucking up moisture ever day for a week with sub-zero temps. by the end of the week, she started getting glitchy on me, so i decided to retire it.

fast forward a year. my gf's 8350 gives up (and dare i say she was harder on her phone than i was on my storm), so i go find my storm sitting in a drawer, battery still in it. i plug it in, wait a couple hours, come back, and low and behold, she fires up and takes all the gf's info thru dm. she used it for a month until the radio finally died and she got the white 9350.

two weeks later and the phone is still on (radio and bluetooth off).
the screen never cracked, and aside from a few scratches and dings, she's fully intact.