[bardram]

Hurricane Irene hit us here on Long Island Saturday night through Sunday afternoon. There was significant damage in my area, a lot of massive trees down, some through houses. I was fortunate that my home was not hit by a tree. We lost power sometime Saturday night, and it just came back to us yesterday, although there are still thousands of home with no electric. I had a car charger, and various supplies ready. I knew that my BB was going to be my only form of communication, and it really failed me. I don't know if it was a problem with towers, or verizon, but service was terrible. No data for days, and calls were very hard to get through. Signal would be 3g one second, then 1X, to 1x, and then none. All while standing in the same place. Trying to place calls usually resulted in "call failed". Texts were not going through for the most part. BBM was the most reliable, but even that was not 100%. It wasn't until Monday afternoon that the cell service improved, but that was better than nothing being that I still had no power to my house. Things could have been much worse, but when I had to rely on my BB, it was sad to see it not working as it should have. This just goes to show how easily our lives can be sent back to the stone age, and I am thankful for great family, friends and neighbors who all helped each other out and made the best of it.

[funnykindel]

sorry for your bitter experience...

[greggebhardt]

It really shows that when we have a something happen like this our devices can become useless

[funnykindel]

if your are depending on B and B depends on A. if A becomes faulty, B becomes useless.

[kdklein]

None of that is your bb's fault. If and kindel said, if verizon's network goes down, or is overloaded, there isn't much your blackberry can do. It isn't some magical communication device. If you are serious about communicating during a disaster you should consider a short wave radio, cb radio, or even some walkie talkies...

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[eve6er69]

if the towers are overloaded then bbm and email would work fine because that is reliant on rim servers. calls and texts are strickly on vz

with what you were saying the signal fluxing down to 1x that meant there was some tower issues like a down tower or damaged one. that will affect everything including bbm. you need signal to send and recieve stuff. im sure even people with dumbphones had issues and people with more advanced ones too. thats part of a big event, i know i was in irene's path also. lost power for 28 hrs

[rcm1301]

It's mostly the wireless network, not so much the individual phones or carriers. You can have the best wireless phone in the world, but if the wireless network experience problems during a disaster, that best of class phone won't help you much. In cases like hurricanes, the best solution for communication is probably satellite phones, but I'm not even sure about that.

[Sharke]

Manhattan here, Irene was nothing more than a slight breeze. We had no power outage or cellphone interruption but my hair was messed up slightly.

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[blackrocker]

Anytime the electric grid is down and battery back-up is depleted, most technology becomes nothing more than cool looking paper weights - even more so when you add physical damage to the mix.

[sj-performance]

i live in miami, FLORIDA....we floridians know a lof about hurricanes...let me tell you everytime get hit with a strong storm...its gauranteed your cell phone service goes out...never have i blamed my blackberry nor carrier...its part of nature...part of going through a hurricane...thats all...believe me im used to it...ive gone thru 5-8 of these things...and guess what...theres another one brewing in the tropics

[DrewDT]

Sorry about your bad experience but as other posters mentioned, this is par for the course in any natural disaster. Cell phones/technology in general will go down and have always been that way. I live in Southern California and we definitely know disaster preparedness do's and don'ts. If you want to be able to stay in touch in case of a disaster then a two way radio or satellite phone are the only way to go. Also, purchase a cheap battery operated am/fm radio for news updates. Cell phones and landline phones should never be relied on in disaster situations.

[jerry12]

Well here in NC our landline phones were out and the cell system worked great.

[stunna2010]

That was obviously a network issue, Verizon failed you, not the 9930.

[yankeed1]

I was on both Long Island (Nassau/western Suffolk) and in Manhattan throughout the "hurricane", and my verizon service was fine. The first 9930 they sent me was doing that a lot. Verizon was trying to tell me that when it was doing it in my home, it must be because it's a bad spot and I should only have 1x there. Although my other lines all say 3G and stay connected to BIS. Went through a lot of hours of tech support until they put me over to techs from Blackberry in Canada who determined it was a hardware issue. They said the radio in the phone wasn't working correctly and would need to be replaced. Coincidently, with my second replacement device in the middle of the storm started lagging out and when I rebooted it, it rebooted and deleted all of my text messages, contacts, and all settings! That was probably a software issue from either google sync being installed, or dropbox though.

[SeanNYC76]

I live in BKLYN NY...and I just gotta say,,,We got hit also! And While I was fortunate to have not lost power, we still got a bit of water damage at my house! Anyway, my Blackberry was my best friend through the whole ordeal. My Droid Charge was hardly even used the whole weekend during the storm. However, my 9930 was rock solid! Voice quality was top notch as always, Data was moving along just fine, no text delays, no email delays, honestly....Zero to complain about at all!

To the OP, most likely had more to do with your tower in your area then to do with your Phone itself.

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