Beware, DTEK50 VERY FRAGILE!!

FYI to anyone still on the fence regarding whether or not they want one, I have a warning. The display is overly fragile! The 5 month old DTEK50 we bought our son to replace the Z30 he broke in a freak accident just before his 3rd year of college started fell less than 12" onto a concrete floor while wearing the leather wrap around case (with the window) sold by BlackBerry. The display shattered in about a 1" circle! I accidentally dropped my Q10 more than once with just the basic silicone & plastic open face case with no damage on the same floor! I tried to get BlackBerry to cover it under warranty because it was such a minimal fall but was refused. When I asked to be escalated to a supervisor I had my time wasted with making several pictures of the damage to send them. After sending them twice I was called four days later and told yet again that the pictures weren't there. So I dropped everything and went home and sent the pictures as an attachment in the reply to the latest email. I also proposed that if they didn't want to cover even part of the repair that I still think should've been covered at 100% perhaps instead they could give me part of the repair costs as a discount on a new DTEK60. After waiting a day I was sent a "form letter" email that said the warranty doesn't cover damage.

So much for "quality customer service"! I wound up buying him a DTEK60 while they were slightly on sale (the 50 was marked down heavily but the 60 was only 10% off) so he has a usable phone. But I'm still stuck with a useless device that they wouldn't even give me a ballpark figure for repair cost to replace the display! My wife has her Priv in the same leather wallet type of case. Last week she dropped it down an entire flight of carpeted stairs with no visible faults or running glitches. My Q10 has fallen from my shirt pocket over a dozen times in the last 2 years. Working fine to send this rant...

Obviously BlackBerry doesn't care at all but I wanted to warn people before they slap down the cash to buy one with their OWN money!

Just my $.02, YMMV ! ;-) sent via my Q10

Screens are one of those things. You could drop it 20 more times without any damage at all.

Whether it's Gorilla glass or Dragontrail glass (like the DTEK50), it's still glass.

Sucks though.

That's some bad luck for sure. Got lucky today. My wife's dtek 50 was knocked off the table 3 ft to hardwood floor face down. Was sure it would be shattered but nothing. It does have a screen protector on it. Not sure if that helped.

I suppose so, but I'm Still not happy about the fact that none of the other 4 Blackberries we've had even HAD GORILLA GLASS yet have fallen face down dozens of times with cases that offer zero screen protection with none ever breaking. When this fell a fraction of the distance it broke badly enough to kill the digitizer. My daughter used a pre gorilla glass Galaxy S5 for over a year with multiple cracks in the display. The other reason is that I spent quite a bit more money to get the leather case that covers the entire device! So when his DTEK fell it never directly hit the floor at all. So when I compare one 11" fall that destroyed the DTEK's display so it doesn't even light up when that display never directly touched the floor because of the 360° protection and every other phone hasn't suffered damage I feel like I wasted my money twice. First by getting him the DTEK instead of another Z30 or at least the cheaper priced Priv. Secondly by spending over $30 for the BlackBerry brand case instead of the rubber & hard plastic case I've used for the other Blackberries that is between $3 and $8! But mostly because they could see how many devices I've purchased directly from BlackBerry (when they still seemed to care about multi phone purchasers) but they made zero effort to give me ANY assistance! Obviously loyalty is meaningless to BlackBerry any more!

Just my $.02, YMMV ! ;-) sent via my Q10

It is just bad luck imho, it isn't BlackBerry's fault. It depends on the angle of the fall and stuff like that. I've had around half a dozen BlackBerry's including the d50 and never ran a case. I've dropped each one at least 10 times and never cracked a screen. I've cracked and scratched bezels, battery covers and broke buttons off, but screens were always good.

Hell, my dtek was knocked out of my hand in a store and it landed about a foot away from me face down and slid maybe another half a foot. I was sure there would be major damage but to my surprise I couldn't even find a scratch. Lucky, I guess.

my bb dtek50 was fallen on street on ice,and i have display broke a half and still working :D

Wish I could say that! His broke at the worst possible time, as we're just starting to pay the bills for the credit card purchases over the Thanksgiving to Xmas period... Plus you are showing yet again how poorly his device did since yours fell more than 3x as far and was still usable for at least some things while his was totally covered by the expensive BlackBerry leather case yet it was rendered dead on the spot! I think they could've at least covered part of the repair considering how poorly it stood up. And if they weren't willing to do so the rep shouldn't have wasted almost 2 weeks and over three hours of my time sending them pictures over and over and then after a week calling me to say they've never received any pictures! I actually replied to their emails and added the pictures as an attachment in .jpg format. After that 3rd email even though the BlackBerry rep said he'd watch for the email I told him I would send as soon as I got home within 25 minutes I got no response from that rep either! Then 2 days later I got a "form letter" email saying that the warranty doesn't cover damage...

So now I have a $420 paperweight. To rub salt into the wound I was told multiple times that I could always send it in for repair. When I asked how much it would cost to replace the display I was always told that they "couldn't give me a price until I paid for a diagnosis" and of course also paid to send it to them!! I didn't ask for costs of other unknown damage, just for the replacement display! Unless they are total morons they HAVE to know what they'll charge for the part and a pretty good idea how much the labor costs are to install it. The way they put it I could've wound up being charged as much or more than the cost of buying a new device! NOT the way to treat customers that have used 9 different BlackBerry devices over the last 6-8 years!

Just my $.02, YMMV ! ;-) sent via my Q10