My Blackberry Curve dumped me.
Prior to this break-up, our relationship had been on the fritz for a while. He’d done some things I hated, like allowing RIM to withhold my e-mails, but I knew we could work it out just like we had done for the past eight years.
One particular night, I was happy to relieve some of the stress by giving Curve a rest for the night. Tucked safely in my party bag, he’d sleep the night away and hopefully resume to normal functionality in the morning. He’d had a tough time that day. I hadn’t quite gotten all my e-emails and I spent a full hour trying to find out which icon was causing the red alert light to blink continuously. I discovered, after a battery pull, that it was just a glitch鈥gain.
I truly wanted to give him the night off but somethings just had to be tweeted. I reached for Curve and hoped he was feeling better. Three tweets later I was sure we’d have a great night. Then the arrows flashed over my signal bars indicating an incoming message at the same time I pressed send on my tweet. I tapped relentlessly on the cancel button only to be met with a black screen. Sigh. He was in a mood. I’d heard of the white-screen-of-death but a black screen too?
I took the battery out and gave it a rest. Battery pulls had become all too familiar in our relationship. Thirty minutes later I replaced the battery and waited for the 20 minute start up. A white battery appeared with an “X” over it. “An “x”, what does that mean?” I wondered. I trusted my other friend to research the web on her phone. The sad look on her face told me it wasn’t good news.
I partied the night away trying not to think of Curve. How could he do this to us? Maybe this was only a temporary situation – the mood to end all moods. I found myself at home scrounging through my former Blackberry loves and trying each battery in Curve. Nothing worked; nothing revived him. I left him plugged in overnight and the same thing the next day. So we went to the emergency room – also known as the Verizon help kiosk.
I paced nervously in the waiting area. The technician told me in more or less words my phone had quit and would no longer work. I had other Blackberry phones that would malfunction. I had put up with the great RIM shut down of 2011, a limited camera with no flash, and even waiting in doctor’s offices without the benefits of Angry Birds, but quitting without warning was the last straw. He could try to come back to me with special offers and promotions, but I was done.
I browsed the isles of other Blackberry phones taunting me with their empty promises. I knew our relationship would always be taunted by RIM and its inability to commit to processing my data. Then I saw him, sitting there cased in a white display – clean, crisp, and most of all functional. I was in iLove.
The Verizon salesman walked me through the basics. Coming from my love-hate relationship with my Blackberry I wasn’t sure how to deal with a phone that actually worked. No battery pulls? No delayed data? A touch screen that doesn’t hurt my fingers with small buttons? I wasn’t use to this kind of treatment.
I admit I stumbled at first. My past made me nervous to do anything on my phone other than talk. With every app I downloaded I wondered – would this be the one? Would this be the one to crash my system? He seemed complicated at first with swiping and zooming and turning and twisting. As I adjusted I realized later that it’s all for my benefit.
Two months later, we are inseparable. I’m the envy of friends as I share my Words With Friends score and impress them with the magic of the double-tap. I take pride when I pull out my iPhone in public and others marvel. “May I see that?” they ask. That sure beats the “You still have that?” question I got before with my Curve. I can text, talk, and even see the weather without causing a major shut down鈥ven on the 3G network. He’ll never freeze up when it gets tough and take me through another battery pull. I can trust him to do what an expensive phone is supposed to do – function properly.
To this day, I can’t see how I stayed with Blackberry so long. I didn’t understand friends before who made the switch. I suppose everyone has to learn what a good phone is in their own time and it takes a while to leave Blackberry – especially when you’ve invested so much time.
But it turns out the rumors were true – once you go iPhone, you’ll never go back.