[cwmont13]

I think everyone will agree that BB has had some tough years and still isn't (and may never be) out of the woods. In reality BlackBerry has only themselves to blame. Their CEO's have been shortsighted and refused to see the way the smartphone market changed with the release of the iPhone, iPad, and Android. When they did respond, it was too little to late. Just my opinion.

I was a happy BB user. Notice the keyword "was". I started out years ago with a Pearl, moved to a Curve, Bold 9000, and then to a Torch 9800. While still fairly happy with RIM, there were reasons why I finally left the platform. As I got older and my eyes were getting worse, even with my glasses I just couldn't get what I needed out of the small screens on the BB devices. Even the Torch at release time was still smaller than other phones being released at the same time and BB offered nothing larger than the 9800. The web experience still lagged compared to other devices. The other thing was that I found RIM's build quality to be going downhill. I'm not tough on my phones and they are cased on day one, but I had terrible luck with both my 9000 and my 9800.

I went through four 9000's in about a years time. Each with different QC issues, one with main board failure, two with speaker failures, the last one kept rebooting itself for no apparent reason. I'm no tech noob, I wiped and reloaded the OS on that last 9000 enough times to know it was a hardware issue. I held out with the sick 9000 till the 9800 came out and grabbed one a couple weeks after release day.

I went through 3 of those in a year's time. First one had the button panel fall off within a week and exchanged it at the AT&T store. That one developed a severe light bleed at the bottom of the screen and a wobbly slider KB. Had to send that one back. The third one ended up almost completely unusable due to the loose wobbly slider KB. By that time I was done with RIM. My BB experience was no longer a fun thing. The constant QC issues were just too much. I honestly didn't have time to replace a badly manufactured device every 3 to 4 months.

Picked up a used Android of CL, sold the 9800 and moved on. Still not a huge fan of Android but it gets the job done. However I still miss that great KB on the 9000

I only wish the best for BlackBerry and hope they continue to do business. It would be a sad thing to see one of the innovators of mobile communications go by the wayside. However, if they do fail they will still only have themselves to blame.