stuff inside my little mind

Let me back up a little.  I just had an online conversation with a man who couldn’t afford the 8900.  Well, neither could I!  AT&T wanted 200 bucks, somewhere else wanted 150.  When you want the phone, and want it NOW, then you are really in a jam.  I got a Dell Perks ad last week, where “Blackberry” was listed.  So, off I went.  I found that the vendor, Wirefly, was one I had looked at before.  Their only options were new, 8900 for FREE, and renew, 8900 for 40 bucks.  Yeah, 40 bucks!  But – the online options for what you get were not at all what I wanted.  Lo and behold, there was a phone number.  I called.  And sure enough, you can call Wirefly, get a phone at the advertised price, and that’s it.  Seriously, somebody is making money on the phones!  It took three days to get mine.  I ended up buying a one year warranty via Wirefly.  This particular warranty covers a complete loss of the phone up to 3 times.  In a year.  Amazing for 50 bucks.  AT&T has a warranty, usually added to the monthly bill.  I might have paid a little more, but I should have some reassurance.  I got the insurance info in 5 days.

Kudos to Wirefly and their very helpful sales department!  Until the “major” vendors can drop their price, this is a good option.

On to the BB 8900!  I touched on some pluses in Part 1.  Here, I’m going to hit a few minuses.  You might think these are minor, but after using the Curve 8300 for almost two years, these items stuck out.

Problem #1 – the Curve series has gotten rave reviews for using a full size keyboard.  The 8900 is no different.  However, with the 8900 I found that the alt-shift keys were a little farther apart.  This causes a little difficulty with typing, which can be overcome with usage, but the alt-shift-H combination requires two hands unless you get really lucky.  I use this for phone status rather than going through the menu.  Same for the alt-shift-del combo for rebooting.  It’s kinda ham-handed, simply by moving the keys 1/8 of an inch.  You might think these are minor, and they might be, and I am adjusting.  It’s still tough.

Problem #2 – the back cover is not a tight fit like the 8300. It clips on rather than slides, and the actual connections are good.  The problem is, when I grip the phone, my hand makes a little push in the back cover, right above the clip.  I will try using a little electrical tape on the inside of the cover to make it feel more solid.  The “solidness” of the original Curve was a plus.  Having a “flimsy” phone isn’t very “manlike”!  Or very secure, actually.  The dentable cover is a real minus.  A tiny bit more engineering here would have solved this problem.

Problem #3 – the 8300 took a few knocks, but was never knocked offline or lost its battery via abuse.  The other night I set the 8900 on my nightstand (what?  you say you don’t take your BB to bed with you? LIAR!) and bobbled it a bit.  The phone actually rebooted when it hit the table from a distance of about three inches.  I’m going to give this a good try, but so far this looks like a phone that won’t take much abuse, and there are people who will abuse their phones, either on purpose or by accident.

Paying the full price and having no insurance would be bad.  Right now, I am feeling a lot better about taking out the extra policy.