[andut]

I came across this guy ranting about his recently broken Blackberry.... I just realized that the problem with Blackberry phones are not only the lack of apps, but also its unreliability. The phone itself is usually packed with features, which is great... but the unreliability aspect is what has brought a lot of angry ex-Blackberry fans to switch. He suddenly reminds me of that time when my Blackberry Torch 9800 finally died and I've lost all of my contacts phone numbers and BBM. It was so sudden, I lost not only all of my contacts, but also photos and documents. Has this ever happened to you guys before? How do you save contacts in the case that your Blackberry dies? And will the future BB10 phones solve this problem?

[Thunderbuck]

Sorry, can't say I share this point of view. In my experience BB handsets have been of better-than-average quality all around.

And I'm sorry you had the experience of losing everything, but that's always a possibility no matter WHAT the device. That's what backups are for.

BlackBerry has a huge advantage over the iPhone, BTW, in that you can configure virtually everything to be saved to a removable SD card.

[Jonesy1966]

I'm on my 6th BlackBerry and one of the reasons I keep coming back is its reliability. I've only had one major issue in all that time which was resolved with RIM's help. I've had other minor issues but those too were solved, mostly by myself and a little bit of tinkering and in a few minutes and all of those issues were with OS6 on my old 9700.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9790 using Tapatalk

[DocDRM]

Backup - restore. BB Protect. Advance OS and LED. There's an app for that, etc . . .

[magutwit]

Huh, no...I actually still have my Torch 9800 that I bought straight after the launch. It becomes very buggy, but it works. Were all the Torches assembled at the same place?
Why do I ask? I used to have a nice Samsung (I forgot how it was called, a girly model which was quite popular), a lot of my friends had the same model. Everybody was complaining all the time that it was broken very often and people would lose everything, while mine was always Ok, I'd even pass it in a washing machine once and it was working all right.
The thing is everybody had this phone assembled in China while mine was assembled in Roumania or something like that (I live in Europe). As crazy as it may seem, but before buying it I just went to a couple of big shops and found one that wasn't assembled in China (I always pay attention to it).

[gtpointer]

I've thrown my BBs around quite a bit over the past few years and had no problems with them, apart from my screen broke once but I think that was my fault (it was still under warranty though, sent it off and my carrier replaced it, no complaints there). My gf's trackpad became unreliable on her 8520 but I don't know whether the curves are less reliable than the bolds? BB Protect means your phone dying suddenly isn't a problem when it comes to contacts etc. and you can rest assured the current level of automated backup, if not more will be there come BB10.

[Denise in Los Angeles]

Everytime I read a rant from someone that they lost their contacts or their pictures, I do a back up. I copy all my third party apps and themes using BBSAK and use Desktop Manager to back up my phone and contacts. I usually do a full copy and paste of my media card to save all my pictures too. Bottom line is that if you have any info that you want to save, you need to back it up.

I've never lost a phone in all the time I've used mobiles, but last week I had a scare that I had left my BB in a restaurant.... it can happen no matter how careful a person you are, also phones do break, and get stolen, so its up to the user to save any info/data from their BB that they really value.

[andut]

Oh I saw the icon app for Blackberry Protect... But I never knew what it was for... I guess RIM should've advertised it more so average user like myself would have an idea as of what that app does

[howarmat]

Never had to replace a Blackberry or any other smartphone i have owned. So they are just as good as everyone else IMO. Now i have heard others needing many replacements but its not common

[jafrul]

sorry to hear that happening to you.. i guess u just received one of those phones/gadgets/items that once in a while happens to ANY products irregardless of the brand.

i, for one, have one of the most robust built torch in the world... countless one meter drops.. fallen into a muddle, washed and toilet air-dried, and restarted fine after that.
albeit after more than two years, the phone veils not slide anymore (hence no more qwerty experience), but since it has also a virtual keyboard, i don't find it a trouble not using the qwerty. in fact, i felt that this virtual keyboard is way much better for my liking...

too bad u had one of the worst phone but u can't be blaming it on the brand. any gadgets/electronics tend to have reliability issues.
it's just not right to blame it on the brand.
come to think about it, i found that more and more iphone repair shops, Samsung service center opened up (even in shopping malls) in my vicinity nowadays. wonder if all their products have one way or another issues of reliability.

Sent from my unsliding slider BlackBerry 9800 using Tapatalk

[aragone79]

so, this the wierd one, he lost all his pictures. hmmm.... I never got any experience such like this. BB Protect can help him to backup and restore contacts, bbm contacts, and notes. for pictures, you need to install dropbox and let it sync with your BB phone. That's safer and easy to restore if any disaster happened at your BB handset.

[qbnkelt]

The only phones I've ever had to replace were two 9930s. Nuked. Out of nowhere, just nuked. Never had that happen, not since I first started using BB back in 2004.
I back up weekly. Or every time I switch devices. Full backup first, then take out SIM card, etc. Never lost anything.

[Snap51]

Actually happened with a phone of mine............an IPhone 3GS. Proof that no brand/platform is immune to problems.

[Denise in Los Angeles]

Can a Mod change the name of this thread? There are too many threads posting negative things about BlackBerry, that can happen to any brand of phone,

[brmiller1976]

I haven't owned a BlackBerry in years, but I don't but the "unreliability" thing at all.

You want unreliable? Try Android?

And don't drop your iPhone, or you'll meet "unreliable."

Stuff breaks when it shouldn't, and that can be frustrating. But the most reasonable way to evaluate reliability of rapidly-evolving technology is to compare it to its peers. In that regard, one can hardly say BBs are "unreliable," unless every other device out there is also "unreliable."

At which point, I'd probably tell the person who believes this that a smartphone likely isn't for him/her.

[ibpluto]

Uuuummmmmm........ Backup?

[Roo Zilla]

The guy's problem that caused his phone to just die is probably rare. The other problem he mentions though, is common. Blackberries freeze way too much. When I had them, they would freeze at least a couple of times a week. Some people recommend doing a battery pull every morning when you wake up.... Sorry, but that's not an acceptable solution, it's a ridiculous solution. There was a 2 year span, when I went through about 12 company issued Blackberries, most of them because I did the same thing the guy in the video did whenever it froze at an inopportune moment. A bunch were replaced though, because the trackballs would start getting sticky or stop working.

[djenkins6]

I think their #1 selling point is that they are so reliable, we have all these people still using os4, os5, os6 devices after years. Toyota have their advertising saying that some huge percentage of all Toyotas are still on the road after 20 years, I wonder how many old blackberries are still chugging away reliably connecting people after years of use.

[LazyEvul]

Technology can be like this sometimes I suppose. My first (and last) ever Apple product, a first-gen iPod Touch, had the exact same problem two or three times: the screen would flicker a whole bunch of random colours, or just go plain white. First few times they repaired it under warranty, but then the last time the little piece of paper used to indicate if it was submerged in water had turned slightly pink (probably from being in a high-moisture environment at some point, I certainly never dropped it in water), so they charged $100 to fix it. Soon after it came back, the screen started glitching again. Not to mention the numerous times I had issues with the charging cable or the headphones breaking. Haven't used it since then.

But my first BlackBerry wasn't all that reliable per se either. It was a Bold 9780, and make no mistake I loved it - it was an excellent communication device, just as I had hoped. But one day the screen died on me (What is it with me and shoddy screens?) - it went white and stayed white. Luckily it was under warranty, so I got it fixed. But a year later the same issue repeated itself, this time it was no longer under warranty, and to make a long story short, I put aside the apparent issues with the 9780 and upgraded to my 9810. The 9810's microUSB port is beginning to act up - frankly I get the feeling I just abuse my devices too much. But I don't regret either purchase, they've been great devices. I'm not entirely sure why, but I just can't say the same for my iPod Touch.

And then there was my LG Dare. Seemingly indestructible. But towards the end of the contract, the vibrate motor died, and I upgraded to the 9780. No phone seems to get by me without something going wrong!

BlackBerry's do have one undeniable issue at the moment, and that's freezing. We as CrackBerry aficionados know how to get around the weaknesses of our devices to get the most out of them, but for the average person, the BlackBerry experience goes something like this: buy new device, download lots of apps onto it and fill up memory, complain about device being hellishly slow, pull battery whenever really frustrated, upgrade to a non-BlackBerry as soon as possible. It doesn't help that any OS updates that might improve things are slowed down colossally by the whole carrier approval thing, and as a result you have to once again be fairly tech-savvy to keep your OS up-to-date.

The best advice I can give then? Backup your data plenty. I use Desktop Manager and BB Protect to keep back ups of all my data. Every piece of technology can go wrong at some point, so keep yourself safe and you won't be so bitter if anything does go wrong.

[Ecm]

Other than a sticky trackball on an old curve (which was replaced under warranty), I have never had an issue with any Blackberry. Or on an iPhone or Android....

[lnichols]

CrackBerry's Number 1 Problem: TROLL Increase as BB10 Launch Aproaches!

[Branta]

CrackBerry's Number 1 Problem: TROLL Increase as BB10 Launch Aproaches!

By the time you posted that the troll was well banned. One down, more to come.

[collinc93]

I was about to comment then I saw the above....good catch

[jasonvan9]

Unreliability has never and will never be an issue for blackberries, there is a very good reason it is my phone of choice when i travel around the world for work BECAUSE it is so reliable.
As far as losing data, has never happened to me personally since i learned about the backup and restore function of desktop manager, which also does your entire memory card if you wish. The worst phone i have ever owned was my first nokia 6000 series cell phone which had the white screen of death frequently.

Need i say BlackBerry 10 will be even more reliable, we all know the story of QNX running pieces of the space station or nuclear power plants... Those guys obviously dont mess around with glitchy unreliable systems

[cbvinh]

Hah hah... seemed convenient that he destroyed his BB phone. Sounds like he's trolling for a free BB10 phone from RIM - "You guys better do something about it..." - then a mention of BB10 and bashing of Apple.