BlackBerry (sigh)

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One time a friend and I chatted to each other on Messenger:  Our BlackBerrys do so many strange things, it’s like Paranormal Activity! To wit, I take a photo and save it, but it’s nowhere to be found in my album. Sometimes old or recent SMSs will just disappear. The phone number of the sender or receiver stays, but BlackBerry apparently deletes their messages. Also, on occasion, I’ll read or delete an e-mail, but it’ll pop back up as unread two or three times.

I learned a trick from another friend on how to solve some of these quirks: Shut if off, flip its battery out a few seconds, slip it back in, and turn the thing back on. I know, it's real archaic solution, but it works most of the time. Photos appear in my album, and e-mails behave normally again.

Then, recently, I realized that I hadn’t been getting alerts for e-mails, and I was inadvertently signed off on Google Talk. I tried my little trick, and it didn’t seem to work. But a few minutes later, I’d hear that familiar e-mail alert. But over the past day or two, my BlackBerry became flat out disconnected from the internet. No access to Facebook, CNN etc on my browser. Somehow though I was still connected to Twitter via its ‘app.’ Thankfully I could still make and receive calls, and send and receive SMSs.

I find out there is a worldwide outage, from a Fox News report BlackBerry Services Come Slowly Sputtering Back (sigh). Tell me, how can this happen? A major mobile device, used by millions of people around the world, and we can’t connect or browse! In BlackBerry Service Hiccups Spread; Five Continents Affected* The New York Times reports that RIM has identified the problem:

Earlier this week, Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, attributed the problems to equipment failures and backup systems, blaming a faulty switch that links its internal network to the Internet as a whole.

RIM is already on a downward spiral with its sales, and this is the last thing it needs. The Times acknowledges this:

The latest blackout comes at a precarious time for the company, which is struggling to battle against sluggish sales and a tablet that landed with a thud. Dozens of sleek new Android devices are arriving on store shelves in time for the holiday season and Apple is releasing the latest version of the iPhone this Friday.

This faulty switch is, unfortunately, just one problem in what is appearing more and more as flaws in its systems, operations and-or strategy. As a symptom, declining sales hits the company. But service outages like the one now is a knock upside the heads of its customers. The Times ends with,

On CrackBerry, a popular online forum that caters to BlackBerry owners, a thread called “Enough is Enough” had attracted thousands of views and hundreds of comments by Wednesday afternoon. “This is it. This is the boiling point. Someone has to go over to Waterloo and slap those in charge at RIM,” wrote a user going by the name BlackLion15.”

Note: I wrote this article on October 12th 2011 for an old Media & Tech blog.  *The New York Times revised the article I had originally read, so the quotes I pulled no longer quite match the article.