[thewesman]

Well, I just had a beautiful article written on what to do if your otterbox defender won't go into holster mode. Unfortunately when I hit backspace near the end of the article internet explorer went back a page and when I went back forward I lost the whole thing :-(

The long and short of it is that I got a new otterbox defender for my pearl and it wouldn't go into holster mode.

I'm not going to go into detail right now, if I have time later I'll go into word and re-write my letter and then copy and paste it on here. If I typed the whole thing and lost it again I'd be in need of a new computer (as this one would be going through the window).

Do this at your own risk. I only did it because it's a $50 case and I didn't want to spend another $40 on shipping and be without it for another 3 weeks.

I pushed the magnet out of the holster, don't worry, there's no glue in there, it's held in place by pressure. There's a hole that you can insert something in to push it out (I used a punch awl). I reccomend having the holster in a plastic bag so that if the magnet goes flying you don't lose it. If you lose the magnet you're screwed.

I tested both sides of the magnet in front of where it's supposed to be on the blackberry and it turned out that the side of the magnet that was facing the blackberry had about 1/4" less range than the side facing away. So I the magnet back in place with the stronger side facing the case. I put the magnet in with thumbs (strong from the crackberry usage) and when it was partially in I put the magnet facing down on a solid flat surface and pushed with all my weight (which is a a lot LOL) and that pushed the magnet in flush with the case. As a last measure to make sure it was in far enough I hit the magnet lightly a few times with a rounded hammer.

Now my blackberry goes into holster mode every time.

I'll try to write detailed and user friendly instructions over the next few days and I'll replace this post.