Decision time: iPhone, Evo, iPad or Blackberry?

So my Blackberry finally took all the beatings it could handle.

I was in my driveway a few weeks back saying good-bye to friends who had stopped for a visit. I pulled the Blackberry out of my pocket and it slipped out of my hand. As the phone hung in mid-air, I swung my hand down to catch it (I’m quite the athlete, you know).

But I didn’t catch it. Instead, the force of my attempted catch resulted in the phone essentially being thrown to the pavement.

The phone separated into five pieces upon impact with the ground. Frankly, it appeared to shatter into pieces.

I know what you’re thinking. That was it, right? The phone wouldn’t work anymore, right?

Wrong.

Within minutes, I put the pieces back together (including the track ball). It worked fine, but it was scratched up. And … the ‘T’ button didn’t work anymore.

So, for a couple weeks, I sent e-mails and text messages using my skills as a wordsmith to use no words containing a ‘T’. That’s not easy, but I succeeded.

But then I was on vacation with my family in Galveston, Texas. We were staying in a condominium with a third-floor balcony. On the final day, as I relaxed with a cup of coffee on the balcony, my 3-year-old daughter played with crayons and markers and baby dolls on the balcony with me.

I warned her ….

“Be careful with those crayons.”

and

“I don’t want your baby to fall off the balcony.”

You can never be too careful with these kids, you know. They can be mighty clumsy with their toys.

I was browsing the web on my scratched-up Blackberry on the balcony when I set the phone on the ground. I wanted to move my chair back out of the path of the sun. As I scooted, my foot pushed the Blackberry off the balcony.

The phone fell one story, clipped a balcony below and fell the rest of the way onto some landscaping rocks near some bushes.

I could only watch as the phone tumbled to the ground. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the continued misfortune of that poor phone. Somehow, I knew it would be resilient.

I made my way down to the ground and began my search. I found ….

• The battery
• The two pieces of the Blackberry shell
• I even found the track ball within the brush. That was a real coup.

Not my actual Blackberry

But I could not find the piece that clips in to hold the track ball in place.