BlackBerry in the fridge
by Volker Weber
A friend's BlackBerry is dropping service, unable to receive mail, drops calls. Others are reporting the same issues. Now he has found out that he needs top put the device in the fridge to make it behave normal again. Don't ask me how he found out. :-)
Comments
Well, most likely by putting it in the fridge, one would think. What made him try that though would be a question with high potential for entertainment! ;-)
Well, a BlackBerry should be a cool device. As it isn't, the user has to help the image of a cool device by putting it into the fridge...
Reminds me of how I once saved a notebook computer into which I emptied a cup of coffee: by putting it into an oven (Backofen). I immediately removed the battery, the mains adapter plug and the harddisk from the notebook and figured that it could well be still alive but would just need a thorough drying. Natural drying would take days (cold and humid fall day), hairdriers would not work as they are heating just the surface, but not where it counts, the interiour, so a dry and warm atmosphere the entire notebook could be exposed to would be the solution - an oven to the rescue! Oven set to 50°C, notebook keyboard removed (for better air circulation), lid wide open (important!), 30 minutes - done. The machine turned out to be fully OK. Exception: the keyboard which I cleaned and dried manually in the meantime was dead, but a new keyboard arrived next day from the German Acer spare parts vendor (at a very reasonable price, 50€ including shipping and handling).
Does it have to stay in the fridge? Makes it a lot less portable.....
Ole, I would assume that while in the fridge, it doesn't drop service, but when outside (probably with a slight delay to allow for regulation of temperature) it will revert to the faulty behavior. So you have to stay in the fridge with the phone or at least have a fridge nearby and use the "delay" to use the phone.
Something just struck me though. Does the phone have proper receiption in the fridge? I would assume a fridge to have thorough insulation... of course, primarily thermal, but there sure is some effect on radio with that as well, isn't it?
I have BB Pearl now for about two months in use. At the bottom line I'm disappointed. It is not the real thing. It's user interface is way too sophisticated and not very robust and practical and the camera is really weak in every feature. The documentation online and offline is very poor. I can't understand that. RIM is a renowed company for quality products. I thought.
Strange enough, I thought also that the global mobile device market would mature in quality - but it's getting worse. Can't understand that. The devices are getting more and more complicated and unrelyable. Not only RIM products.
IMHO the current mobile designers and engineers have not thought their products out.
@Ragnar: I would assume that while in the fridge the BB simply can't drop service for there *isn't* any. I won't do a live test, however.
@Cem: As I found with "normal" (ISDN) phones and mobile phones alike the real problem is that the guys just design the phones but they never seem to actually use them.
BlackBerry? Some new sort of ice cream? =)
Does a BB have backlighting?
Yes, it does.
@Frans - but how do you know whether the backlight is on if the fridge door is closed?
@Stefan: A live test would be easy as long as your fridge isn't too sound proof. Put the device in the fridge, close the door and call it. If you hear it ring, everything is smooth. If you don't, well, then either the device dropped off the network or the fridge doesn't let the sound out. Of course, I assume that if you have access to a BES console, you could check whether the device is still in touch with the server...
Ragnar, the major problem would be, that there's no service at all where my fridge is located. And no, I'm not going to move the fridge ;)
