Hasta La Gadget!

I’m a big fan of the RIM Blackberry Bold 9000. It’s a solid-feeling, decent-working QWERTY smartphone with a lovely high-res screen, lots of apps to download, and an excellent e-mail inbox.

It’s not perfect, though. On AT&T’s spotty 3G network, it can drop phone calls faster than “The Bachelor” switches fiancés. Then there’s the trackball–the little rolling wheel that replaced the old Blackberry’s scroll wheel. It’s a lovely innovation that owes much to old-school trackball-based computer mice. Too much, in fact. The newest BlackBerrys feature a track pad. Sadly, I don’t have one of those.

In any case, the phone has been working fine except for the trackball, which has gotten stuck a few times. I’ve been able to move the ball around with enough force that it rights itself, until last week, when the ball would only roll down and from side to side (though not consistently). As a result, I couldn’t properly scroll up though e-mail, documents, websites, and my Twitter feed. I also couldn’t work with most menus. It was like juggling three balls with one hand tied behind my back. So I decided to try to find a more permanent solution.