A week ago, something important happened in my life. I skied Whistler for the first time ever. If you don't count the time I sort of limped down the mountain on a snowboard, many years back. It was, by far, the best ski day of my short ski season. The conditions, terrain and my skill level allowed for a much better experience than before.
But that's not what this story is about. This is about my now crippled BlackBerry Tour. I've had BlackBerry devices since 2005. For a while, I had 2 devices; a personal phone, and a work BlackBerry. That changed when RIM released the Pearl 8100. I got mine in late 2006 and never looked back. This was still well before the iPhone and the madness that all these apps bring about. The Pearl still works btw.
As part of my ski trip, we took a break for lunch. I noticed that the pocket where I had my phone was not zipped up all the way. And I had many a tumble in knee-high pristine powder. Still, my phone seemed to work, mostly. I noticed that the little pearl thing used to navigate was acting up. I've had that happen before, and didn't think much of it. After lunch, we headed out once more to take advantage of the excellent conditions we were afforded (something like 70+ cm had fallen in the last 48 hours).
Once we were finished skiing and at the bar, I noticed my phone was acting up even more. I couldn't unlock it. Given that I was tired and didn't care for much more than just getting home (we had a 2 hour drive ahead of us), I forgot all about it until I reached Vancouver. That's when one of my friends called me and I noticed I couldn't answer the phone. Baffled, I took the battery out, rebooted the phone, waited patiently and was greeted with the same behaviour. So, I went home, plugged the phone into the charger and went about the rest of my evening.
The next morning, my alarm went off. I tried to switch it off and realised that I couldn't. Now I was concerned. I tried blowing air into the phone, taking things apart and putting it back again, to no avail. Then I tried calling my phone from Gmail and realised that the phone still worked, as in, I could receive calls, but could not answer it because all the keys on my phone were unresponsive. And, only 4 months away from my contract with my current provider ending.
This gave me an opportunity to get a new phone. Or so I thought. I've wanted a new BlackBerry, so after work, I went about figuring out what I could get. That's when I started running into all sorts of obstacles. The guy at the phone shop sounded like getting a BlackBerry would be the worst thing I could do. My current provider's sales staff tried to sway me away from BlackBerry, onto the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (a lovely phone btw), or the giant (5.3") Galaxy Note. I can't honestly say that I would ever want to make a phone call on something so large and odd, but he seemed convinced that I would get used to it. I politely declined all his offers though, because getting any of those phones would mean resigning the contract for another 3 years, and paying another $20 more on top of what I pay every month. Fun right?
I next went to chat with the low cost competitors. They have a lot worse coverage (but then again, I spend probably 95% of my time in a 4 square km area where they have good coverage), and you have to buy the handset (since they don't do subsidies). If I were to buy a handset, I'd get one that was > $500, making this purchase not very appealing to my wallet. On top of that, when I do that and port my number to the of of the new carriers, I'd have to pay a rather stiff set of penalties to get out of my existing contract. So, I'd end up spending a whopping amount of money to keep my number, not have a contract and have a cheaper monthly bill which ought to even out over time. And that too, on RIM's legacy OS (I would have got a BlackBerry).
So scratch that plan. I decided to ride out my current contract. Meanwhile, my phone kept beeping and clicking away with all the notifications but I had no means of checking who/what they were about. I emailed a few friends letting them know how I got to where I did (thank goodness I also have Google Voice, so some of their SMS come as email) and a couple of them lent me their old phones. Of course, the way Canada's mobile network landscape is set up, my current provider used to have an extensive (well, they still do) CDMA network and only recently switched to GSM. So, none of those phones work on their network. I had my old unlocked American BlackBerry, but that didn't pick up the appropriate network either.
And then I went skiing again on Friday (Good Friday was a day off for us). Of course, I had no telephone to wreck this time. Instead, I fell hard on a turn on my left thumb and sprained it (I was still holding on to the pole). Whistler seems to take something from me every time I go there. Thankfully, the swelling is subsiding today (I had a hard time opening my door when I got here Friday night; turning the key in the lock made me realise how important my thumb is).
Saturday, I had a lot of things to do, so I never quite got around to fixing my phone. And people were still bringing me handsets. So, Sunday, armed with 4 handsets (including my broken one), I headed to a retail store to see what I could do about my broken phone. Of course, being Easter Sunday, everything was closed. Well, nearly everything. I finally did manage to find a store and had a long chat with the guy there.
He said I had to buy a SIM card since the one I had in my CDMA-'world phone'-wrecked-BlackBerry wasn't a real one. That privilege cost me $20; $5 for the card and $15 to activate it. I put the card in my old BlackBerry Pearl. It just sat there, looking for the network and never quite found it. Fine. Switched to the two phones my friends gave me, same issue, no network found. Now that I had no more phones to try, I had to buy one. So I did. I got a Nokia 6350 for a cool $100. And I felt like a million bucks with a phone. Because it is the only phone I have. And I needed it, to do things like remotely open my building door, garage door etc.
You don't realise how important these devices have become until you stop having one. Anyway, I still need to stop my data plan (who knows what kinds of fees I will get charged to cancel that) and then live with this phone. I had forgotten how horrible it was to switch phones in the past; when you had to retype in contact info into the new phone. Worse still, I don't think this thing even has T9 enabled for names etc, so I spent a LONG time typing in names. Thank god for things like google sync.
This was one expensive ski trip I took as someone noted. Anyway, to the 67 missed callers, I apologise, if I figure out who you are, I'll get back to you (assuming I want to). For all the BBMs and SMSes I missed, likewise. I'm going to give living retro a go for the next 4 months and hopefully, RIM comes up with a decent device I can switch to on one of those low cost carriers.
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