The Verizon Blackberry

After hearing from my friends all the benefits of having a Blackberry I decided to purchase one for myself, despite the high cost. The main reason for my purchase was for the Internet and email capabilities of the Blackberry, which are said to outrank other phone models. This is where my first problem started. Naturally, as soon as I had turned on my phone the first thing I wanted to do was access the Internet. This task was far more complicated than need be. I saw a globe which I assumed to be the Internet application and after clicking on it I was directed to a page with Verizon applications such as weather and sports, and others which you could purchase, but not one simple address bar or even a search engine. After becoming so frustrated about not being able access the web I decided to make up my own way of doing this, by sending myself a text message that said www.google.com I was able to click on the link and be directed to googles page which I was able to save in my bookmarks. Still after having the Blackberry for almost a year this is the way I go about accessing the web. This relates to the article " The Psychopathology of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, because it seems as though a phone who's main feature is Internet capabilities, should be a lot easier and more instructional about how to use the internet on your phone.

My second problem with the Blackberry, came about when I put a password lock on my phone (actually months after I had put on the password lock), everyday, every time I accessed my phone I was asked to enter the same password to unlock it. One day out of the blue I was notified after entering my password, that this password was incorrect. I thought that maybe I somehow hit a wrong key, so I entered my password for the second time. After being notified 10 times that I had entered an incorrect password (which I am positive was not true and I had entered the correct password) my Blackberry screen turned white and a message reading "wiping" and the progress of the "wipe" were displayed. During this time no key worked on the phone, and after the process of "wiping" I turned my phone on only to discover a completely restored Blackberry, with absolutely none of my information, contacts, email settings etc. After calling Verizon and dealing with a Blackberry technician I was informed that all of my prior applications and settings were lost and irretrievable.

So as you can see, not all of the new technology is all its cracked up to be. I had a lot easier time using all of my past phones, which had no email or Internet capabilities. Although the Blackberry is like having both a computer and phone in one, I sometimes think I would just rather keep the two separate.