The Torch has been out for a few months now (7?). Can anyone tell me if there are any common reliability issues with it?

My experiences fom looking after a fleet of 70 phones:
- The 8800 had trackball and charger socket problems.
- The Bold 9000 had speaker volume and trackball problems.
- The 9700 seems to still have the speaker volume problem, but I'm not sure how common it is, we don't have many of these.

Does the 9800 hardware have any weak spots? What sort of things are people getting fixed?

All our previous phones have had examples of water damage, and I suppose that's just how they are. The sliding keyboard would seem to make it harder to protect. Are there covers available that work with the slider?

ok well, when it comes to the torch and after using it for several months, i find the top part (screen) and the bottom part (physical keyboard) become kinda sorta loose. i don't mean that the sliding mechanism becomes lose because it doesn't, but the top and bottom bang against one another when you type using the virtual keyboard. and i can see how people can find that annoying. it doesn't bother me cause it's very minimal, but it still makes this odd loose clicky noise lol. That's abut it.

As for ur other complaints, i've only used the 9000 and 9700 from ur list and i have never found any problems with the speaker volume. 9000 was the best (for obvious reasons) and the 9700 was good for it's size. 9000 had trackball issues yeah but they were easy to solve so there may be other issue with the torch, but u will only find them if you're looking for them imo.

And yes there are covers for the phone but then ur phone becomes a Jambo phone lol.

I would say that reliability is on par with other BBs. If you are worried about the slider and your users do not like touch screens, go with the 9780.

I know users want bigger screens, I don't know how we're going to go with the touch screens. What the users really want is iPhones, which indicates they're at least prepared to try touch screens, but they aren't necessarily going to get them.

I've been looking through this forum for big issues with reliability, but haven't found anything other than problems with OS bugs, which seem to be gradually getting fixed.

If we were to only ever have slider problems then we'd be better off than before, because the phones would still be usable.

All devices have problems, but the BB seems to be among the most reliable on the market - but even BBs have defects and can break.

I've heard that too, but not according to this study it's not correct:
www.squaretrade.com/pages/cell-phone-comparison-study-nov-10

I've no idea how reliable the survey itself is, but they say Blackberries have triple the malfunction rate of iPhones. A much smaller drop-damage rate and slightly higher spill-damage rate makes up for that to put Blackberry overall in between iPhone 3 and iPhone 4.

I'd say we're getting higher failure rates here than this study suggests, maybe double or quadruple. We've got 70 here, and I seem to be sending one away for repairs once a week (surely that's an exaggeration, that would be about 70%). Maybe that means our phones get used a lot harder than normal, but we are near the end of our second year, and the article does say that malfunction rates have dropped by half in the last two years for all phones.

That might reflect the change from track balls to touch pads and touch screens. An awful lot of our returns are for ball problems, as we're still on Bold 9000s.

The trackpad and touchscreen have FAR less malfunction rates than the trackballs.

Comparing the iPhone to the BlackBerry is really comparing Apples and Oranges.

I've had the Torch since September. It's the first device I ever purchased outright and paid full retail for. I have yet to regret my decision.

we have over 40 users on Torch

one return for a button peeled off
one battery died.

We have returned over 1/3 of the iphone 4 so far.

we dont use windows mobile or android

That's a 5% failure rate for your Torches, over what must be less than 7 months, so their figures are actually low compared to yours. Although I'd barely rate those kinds of problems as real failures.

I'd be really happy with that kind of failure rate and type. Dead batteries are simple to fix, and lost buttons don't disable a phone, especially if the user has a touch screen alternative. (How does a button peel off?)

How many iPhones do you have? What sorts of things are going wrong?

We have 30 iphones and a few personal ones

face sensor failed on several
vibrator failed on one
failed battery on several, only hold a charge for 3 hours
major dropped calls on a few even with an apple rubbber bumper on it

the green BB esc and red button plate has come off on a few devices on teh forums, it seems an adhesive was used that didnt hold well. one user caught a thread from their pants on the corner of the plate causeing it to lift.

That sounds like exactly the kind of problem my users will have. If we get this phone then I'll warn them when I give them out.

I guess the phone is still usable in this condition, despite looking ugly?

What does the face sensor do? Can you use the phone if it fails?

Battery problems are probably pretty serious on an iPhone, as are dropped calls on any phone. Could it be the way they're holding them?

As far as the button issue on the Torch I bought a spare for $6 on cnn.cn when I first heard of the problem. Its still in a drawer waiting for the problem. It heard of a few instances when they first came out bt haven't heard of any in quite a while.
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