Highs and lows

Without a doubt the most powerful drug know to humans it the mind. Yes Obviously the mind is affected by drugs, but the urges, sensations it creates all on its own are so damn powerful. Taking a perfectly good day into the pits, or a terrible day into the skies in a flash.
Some might say the heart plays a part in that, and maybe in a metaphorical way it can, in the same way we suffer heartbreak etc. But the truth is it is our thoughts and feelings which truly control our mood and state of mind.

Many years ago, before a night out, feeling down, a friend took a whole cocktail of drugs which would have most completely off their face, and high into the heavens. But seemingly over-riding the effects of the drugs, his mind kept him low as can be. Thought process and ability to function however was as affected as you would expect. Nothing but his own thought process was going to free him from this spiral.

As anyone who read the last few blogs will know, I have been on a bit of a whirlwind tour of my mind recently, dropping to basement level a few days ago, without warning, or indication that anything was wrong, my mind just bombed. Being quite familiar with lows like this, I prepared for the worst, and got myself ready for a long low period. Yet for some reason (part of which I understand) I bounced back, stronger and harder than I ever recall. By the next morning I was back to my old self +10% more. Strange for me.

For a long time now it has been clear to me that I am influenced by those around me, affected by their moods and state of mind. Am I a mood leech or something, or do I just get affected by trying to make others feel better at my own expense. Draining myself of mental energy for the sake of others? Strange, but I really don't know.

I had lunch with a good friend yesterday, speaking of lots of subjects including one very prominent at the moment to me. Speaking about it, I made perfect sense of the two conflicting sides of me which battle it out, trying to justify my behaviour towards certain others, and make sure that things are not totally one sided. But the truth is, its natural in today's life to give and not take, or vice versa. Sadly my tiny mind struggles with this concept at times, and for that, I pay the price.

Sometimes I wonder if I carry out apparently selfless acts for moral gratitude, from no other than myself. Like an arsonist who likes to watch their fire burn, gloat in the control of the situation and feed from its energy, I wonder if I am the same. Do I get some form of satisfaction from 'helping' others, or am I just getting close gloat on their misfortunes. Only to be drawn in, and feeling obligated to help. The two sides of my mind once again in conflict.

As ever, songs play a huge part in driving my moods, and there are certainly a few in my playlists recently provoking emotions for sure. But how.... Well simple.. My mind. Like I say, the most powerful drug known to humans. Taking the words of others used as lyrics for a song. Translating them in a way where they fit to my state of mind, thoughts or emotions, and turning them into powerful musical messages to myself. Stirring my emotions, and putting my mind into places of happiness and sadness. Sometimes in just minutes.
The drive to work can be torture, the wrong song at the wrong time and its all over for me, the day ruined in a flash. Or on the flip side the day is made in a second.

I have but a few influences on my mind recently, but powerful ones none the less. Conflicting, complex and confusing as hell, but the main thing is, im on a high, and I intend on staying here.

At times like this, my blog plays a key role, so my apologies for any weird ramblings like this that might appear over the coming days or weeks. But just know that getting it off my chest really halps with things, just like it did the other day. That simple Boom! entry changed a lot for me. So if you have things on your mind, trying to figure them out, get them onto paper or a screen. Better still if you can find anyone to listen, talk. Verbalising things can sometimes make so much sense. At times as I am saying something, I am understanding it at the same time.

The mind eh!


PS, I bought a new 'REAL' keyboard as I have a lot of writing planned over the coming weeks, so I am a happy man right now, loving typing once again.

Have a great day, and don't let that mind of yours mess about with you.

There is hope for Wonga yet

But its not quite that clear cut...

It seems my email finally struck a nerve, and I received a call from the complaints department of Wonga this afternoon, stating they were aware there was an issue, and it was clear I was upset and frustrated with the whole matter.

We spent some time checking all the things were in place, I advised them that the bank had informed me there are NO issues with the card, payments to Wonga, and that NO attempts have been made to charge my card for any amount.
Using the details on their system, and adding my CCV code, a phone payment went straight through, demonstrating there and then that there is nothing wrong on my end of the deal.

So Andrew has referred the matter to the IT department for them to look into, and hopefully they can overcome what ever glitch it is THEY are having. In the meantime I wait and hope that they can sort this out once and for all.

I have no intention of being caught in the web of debt with them again, but just hope this matter can be sorted so they don't continue to rank so highly in my list of UK's most useless companies.

So, fingers crossed eh.

For now though I can relax a little, safe in the knowledge that I was NOT at fault at any stage of this nightmare process, and that Wonga have FINALLY after a couple of months bothered to get back to me and help solve the issue.
Just a shame it took a threat not to pay, and the involvement of the Financial Ombudsman to get to this stage.

Thank you however to Andrew for getting in touch and getting the ball rolling.

Trouble getting started on BBM on iOS or Android ?

Well, it appears some people are waiting a very long time now for their activations to come through on their Android and iOS devices, so they can get started using BBM .

Well I just thought I would share what seems to be working for others, and has been reported elsewhere to work.

Force stop the app from the device, then restart the device, and re-open BBM. From there you should be able to re-enter your email address, and get started setting up your BBID and using BBM.
Its not my own idea, but seems to work, on Android at least. Not 100% about iOS.

To force stop an app on Android, do the following.
Go to settings
Select Applications
Select BBM from the App list
Press Force Stop on the apps page.

My gripes about BB10 and the handsets

So before I get started on this entry I just want to make one thing clear as day, I am NOT taking a dig at Blackberry here. I just thought with all the fanboi style posts I have made recently, it was about time I balanced the books a little and made an entry about the 'not so good' aspects of BB10 as a whole, and its devices, the Z10 and Q10.

I have spent a lot of time on Crackberry recently, trawling through the forums, and getting into discussions here and there about things I feel are genuine issues, from my experience with the handsets and OS at least.

Now that I have used the Q for a couple of weeks now (getting there anyway) I thought now would be a good time for this. So lets get going.

First up, the debate over screen size and quality. With 17,000 views and over 350 replies, for a balanced discussion about these matters, this thread is the place to be.q10-vs-z10-screen-size-debate

The intention of this thread was to simply hear some opinions about why some chose the Q with the physical keyboard over the Z and touchscreen. And to see what made people sacrifice some screen real estate for the experience of real buttons. As you can see, it became quite popular, and for the main part actually quite interesting to get an insight into how people use their handset, and what they demand from them.

For me, this is how I see it.

The Z and Q both have superb screens, both to view, and to operate inside the BB10 OS. Ultimately one of the two devices is going to be my favourite, or daily driver. And it wasn't long after opening the box to the Q10 that I knew which it would be. Having spent a couple of months with the Z, and got to know its keyboard pretty well, there is no doubt that the Z10 touchscreen keyboard (TSK) was quite simply the best TSK I have ever used. Trying to switch between that and the Galaxy S2 screen is a nightmare, with the S2 seeming slow and unresponsive, let alone unforgiving. 

The Z really does put most others to shame, in fact I will go out on a limb and say its the best TSK on the market today. With its predictive word suggestions learning how you speak, and its forgiving nature and smart auto correction, you can make a real mess of a whole sentence, and the Z will get what you mean, and sort it out. A bit like the relationship between doctors and pharmacists.

BUT, this is a gripe post remember, so lets get into the nitty gritty here.

As intelligent as the software for the TSK is, it can get a little carried away at times, and its intelligence and smart learning becomes its achillies heel. Make a typo too many times for a word it doesn't know to auto correct, and it will learn the typo, and use it to replace other attempts at the right word.

Example, I have a bad habit of typing 'ypu' instead of 'you'. By pressing the spacebar after making the typo after a while will actually confirm the word is indeed RIGHT. So it will now replace you with ypu on a regular basis. This is partially my fault for not seeing the word appearing and correcting it, and over time I can correct it in one of two ways...

1/ clear all the learned words and start over. Removing a single word from the catalogue is not an option at this point. 

2/ watching the space bar, and concentrating each time I type the word, and each time ypu appears, correcting it until the phone learns not to use it anymore.

Sadly both solutions require me to be less productive to solve a simple issue, admittedly of my own making.

The next issue with the touchscreens now moves onto the Q10. Like the 9900 was at launch, the screen of the Q10 is a little desensitised, and the last few mm's of the edges seem to have no real abilities. The line between bezel and beginning of the display is the issue here. The most common issue users are reporting is the lack of response to the End Call key. Frustratingly hammering away on the red part of the screen, long press, short burst of presses, but no end to the call. 

I have to be honest here and say that since the OS went from .238 up to .273 it seems less of an issue for me at least. There are other times when the screen seems a bit awkward to use, with the selection of small areas at the edge of the screen being problematic. On the odd occasion by pressing the very edge of the screen, you will actually select something that is just OFF screen. Almost as if the phone thinks it is displaying a slightly longer or wider image than it actually is. (if that makes sense)

Staying on the theme of screens, the other complaint that seems to be getting touted about is screen legibility in daylight. With the Q10 packing a sharp and crisp AMOLED display, the legibility of the screen for me on a bright sunny day has never been an issue for me. That said, if you don't keep your screen clean, that's when I notice the legibility becoming an issue, as the smears more than anything else cause the reflective issues. Others however state that regardless of how bright the settings are put at, reading the screen, along with the dark theme are simply impossible. Now we all have different eyes, and live in different countries, so I'm not going to doubt anyone here. But at the same time others, some well respected commentators on Blackberry and mobile devices, state they have NO issue whatsoever with reading the screen, day on day, in rather sunny parts of the world.

Like everything, all opinions are relative, so there is no right or wrong anywhere in this blog, just my own observations, and quotes from others with similar findings.

Lets get away from the screen now and dig a little deeper. How about the depths of the OS?

Now one of the big selling points of BB10 is the 'active panes'. For those not familiar, let me explain quickly. All mobile OS's these days claim to have true multitasking, leaving one application running properly while another is opened and used. The Blackberry way of doing this is to use active panes, this is where an application is minimised on the screen along with other apps that are running. Each of these applications is then capable of displaying a condensed version of its content while minimised. So for example a weather app will show a summary, a news feed will show individual headlines. 

I have to say the active panes are a great little thing, especially for watching for replies to tweets, or keeping an eye on the weather without constantly opening the apps. 

But again, this is about gripes so here goes again.

3rd party app devs seem to have really grasped the concept well, and made the active panes really used full, Blaq, CB, BeBuzz, all having great active panes.

BeBuzz, what is generally a notifications app have had the sense to use their active pane as a battery monitor, a great and helpful little tool especially with its 'time left' section.

However, Blackberry, the creators of these great little panes seem to have done very little with them at all. 

My example would be a simple one, the native clock.

Now the clock has 4 views. Normal clock, World Clock, Stopwatch and Timer. The most common one for me to keep open is the timer, being able just to flick the screen on to see how much time is remaining. Frustratingly, the native app minimised to the clock app only. So regardless of what display would be of use to you, you are left with just the simple clock view. I'm sure there has to be a way that the timer and stopwatch could minimise into usable active panes. If 3rd party devs can do it, come on Blackberry, sort it out.

Digging in a little deeper we start to find a few more little frustrating niggles that really get a bit irritating.

Type and Go function as a whole is a great idea, and can really speed up certain processes, such as sending a simple tweet, or FB update from within the OS. Simply typing 'tw' then starting to compose the tweet will see Type and Go offer the 'send tweet' option when you are done typing. Press it, and its done tweet sent. No opening apps, pressing compose etc, its all done simply and effectively from the home screens of the OS.

BUT (gripe time)

If you want to send an email you have a couple of options, and this is where it gets a little sticky. Typing 'em' will prompt the device to offer 'compose email' at this point. So you can press the option there, then immediately start typing the contacts name, which will present the list of options matching the letters entered, or after 'em' a space then start typing the contact name. Now both these are super efficient ways of getting an email started, there is no doubting that for a second, the problem however lays with the search function itself. Now I should add here that until the issue was raised, I had not noticed it. But once it was mentioned it is something you just become aware of.

Throughout the search settings of the device you can tell the OS where it should look for the information. Different apps, areas of the phone, and indeed 3rd party databases too. Sadly for some reason, the search parameters do not apply to email, so as you start to type the contact name, it will offer every contact matching the characters, including from apps like Facebook and Twitter. 

For those only using their devices for personal use, this is nothing more than a minor irritation. For those using it as business and personal, it becomes a little more of a headache. Contacts who have linked profiles within your device, it will drag down and offer every email address for them. Some might find this helpful, others a hindrance. Either way, it would be nice to have a little control over it.

The next issue for me, again deep within the heart of the beast is notifications.

Back in the days of OS7 the notification settings were so very simple. A little bland to look at, a little too simple maybe with drop down menus and separate sections of in and out of holster etc. The drop downs would offer a whole list of sounds which on selecting it, you could then hit 'try' and you would hear what you had chosen. 

For some reason with OS10 Blackberry have decided that simple was not the way, and nor was having options. Instead the new settings allow a few choice sounds and very little more. To get anything other than what they offer, you need to start browsing the device, and in doing so you dive into a complex sub menu after sub menu of places to find sounds. You are not able to preview the sound, instead you select it and return to the notifications screen. Upon which, if the sounds is not to your liking, you start over again.

I would love to have the simplicity of the notifications back. Heck they even took away all the sounds most of us were so familiar with.

Even the volume of the notifications is dumbed down to one simple slider that is the master control for all sounds within that notifications status, be it normal, loud, work etc. I loved the control of making one email far louder than the rest, hard to miss, and in my face, but at this point OS10 isn't going to allow that at all!

Along with notifications comes my beloved BeBuzz, the custom LED app which gives a custom colour flash to notify of emails from each account, and 3rd party app notifications too. For years now it has been my backup notifications, so if I miss the sound, I would have a visual notification which would repeat. Even with the phone on silent, I knew exactly which notifications awaited me without having to pick the handset up. Sadly with OS10 this isn't quite as smooth as it could be, mainly because the app must remain in an active pane to allow it to work. One simple closure of the wrong app results in NO LED notifications.

My gripe about this? Well its simple. With later versions of OS7 allowing this as a native app through certain carriers (so I am told), I was really hoping that the all singing and dancing OS10 would present us with the coloured LED options from within notifications settings. Alas, its not the case. So notifications are stripped out, dumbed down.... and still on boring old RED !

With all that said and done, I am still left applauding Blackberry on their amazing transition from being old and stuck in their ways, to the modern day, all singing, all dancing devices. People will always have a pop, whatever the state of the OS. When OS7 was the current system people commented on how out of date and boring BB now was, and how if they didn't move into the 21st century BB would fail for sure. Boring interfaces, physical keyboards, and tiny screens. 

Out came the Z10, lovely screen, great new OS in its infant stage, and a true new kid on the block, stepping the game up with its buttonless design and gestures for navigation. Needless to say, the opposition said it was a failure before it even got going, the legacy hardcore users said it was an insult to Blackberry, and the people in the middle bought it and formed educated opinions of it.

My opinion has always been simple. If physical keyboards stopped existing tomorrow, I now know I would have the safety of the Z10's beautifully thought out TSK to turn to. My productivity would drop, my web usage would plummet, but I would be able to use a device without wanting to smash it on the floor.

Then it was the Q's turn. The TRUE next generation of Blackberry in my opinion. Taking a proven system, a great form factor, and firing it way into the 21st century. Again, unable to please all of the people all of the time, there have been again been critics who feel it is blasphemy against all that Blackberry stands for, to launch a device like this. Complaining that keyboard shortcuts are missing which make the device SO unproductive, that other features are not present, and that its not a proper Blackberry without them.

Well, I guess to a degree I join those whiners, with my rant and gripes above. But with one key difference.

My comments, feedback, reviews, and suggestions are just that. I accept that BB10 is a new OS, and has a long way to go yet. Heck no OS has even been perfectly rolled out with no changes needed to it. And in its first few usable releases, I think OS10 has proven itself to be something that will really grow into something great. My comments are not meant to mock or put down this infant OS, but are there to create conversation, to put across my point of view, and hopefully in some small way, contribute towards the direction that the OS takes as is continues to evolve.

One final thing though...

BBM Groups, what the hell happened there?

After not having used groups for years now, I thought it would be nice to have a group for photography a few days ago, so out went the invites. After 10 or so joined, a few friends started commenting that they could no longer see the group, or had received weird notifications saying they could not join 'another' group as they were already at their devices maximum... then showing NONE! 

Being kicked out of a group is one thing, but what happened next is where it all gets worrying. Reports then started that peoples phones, from BBM to the whole OS had dramatically slowed down, some saying it was almost unusable. A couple even resorting to restoring their handsets, and one returning theirs to a store for an exchange, so bad had the issue got.

All issues that I am aware of occurred on a Blackberry Z10, most if not all were running OS 10.0. My Q10 on 10.1 seems unaffected by the issue. Either way, I hope the rollout of the fix for this is swift. Mainly as the BBM Groups function is now rather lovely, and I would love to get a group up and running again, but don't want people screwing up their devices to join.

Right, that will do me for now, I'm sure I will have other moans and songs of praise over the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading.

Blackberry Z10, one week in. (post 500 for the blog)

Well its been a week of learning, experimenting and a fair bit of complaining here and there. But to be fair there has also been a lot of show and tell, mainly to willing participants. I have made a few little opinions known, and review style blog posts over the past week, but I thought I would try and wrap it all up in one little parcel of info, along with any other things I have found along the way so here goes.

If I skimp on detail it is because I have already covered the topic in an earlier post, so am not going to go on and on about the same thing.

Biggest question and talking points first.

Battery, far from spectacular, but seems to manage to get me through a working day at least. Example of the day, I unplugged the Z10 from its charger at 9am this morning. Its now coming on 6pm and I have 25% left. Make of that what you will. Todays usage has been pretty average for a working day for me.

Setting up, this has been a real bone of contention for all it seems. From the hardcore right through to the average users. When we all got our devices I think it was safe to assume everyone expected it to be a simple 'device swap', 20 minute job, but this is FAR from the case.
BIS no longer used, so email accounts dont automatically load and popular. Device swap not 100% nor easy to find, so lots of problems transferring contacts. The nightmare dragged on. Its fair to say that most struggled with these parts, and were unimpressed by the complexity of it.

Browser, I have spoken about this today on Crackberry and discovered I am not the only one with a little gripe about it. Speed of the browser is indeed on par with the other OS's out there, if not a little faster, full Flash support, silky smooth scrolling. My gripe is the lack of a decent double tap to zoom function, with it being mile apart from the competition on this matter. See examples below.

Apps, I think most will accept there is a shortfall of some key apps out there, WhappsApp, Skype, Spotify etc are all absent. Some are 'committed' to BB10 but this gives no indication of when we can actually expect them to appear officially.
Sideloading, this is the option most are going for, with a huge bunch of apps rapidly being converted to BAR files and prepared for sideloading onto the Z10 direct from Android and the Play Store. For me, having the lovely Google Maps on my phone is a must, so I was pleased that its a problem free port over to BB10. WhatsApp seems to work, but cannot populate its contact list. Sky News also works nicely. So on the app front there is hope yet.

Camera, another topic I have been deep in discussion about over on Crackberry. Early impressions from people doing reviews was that it was terrible. However with a little experimentation from myself and others it was found that all was not lost. Its far from horrible, simple to use, some great results if you actually bother to try and get them. I am delighted so far with the results of my efforts.
Some comparison shots between different devices showed that it was far from the worst out there, and actually out performs others in certain areas. Plenty more on this topic earlier in my blog. Camera scores well in my books.

Call quality is superb, as to be expected of a Blackberry, always has been and I hope this continues to be the case.
Messaging text and BBM are again faultless really. Nothing I have come across yet has caused me any issues anyway. Prompt delivery both ways of all formats, including email.

Getting to know BB10, this has been an interesting journey so far, and is FAR from over yet. With settings hidden all over the place, small glitches with how things behave when set in certain ways, and some of the native apps having different behaviours, there is a lot to get used to. But in general, for day to day use, its gone pretty well, and already I am finding myself wondering why gestures are not working on the Galaxy S2. Its become second nature to peek when a notification comes in. All in all its not a bad OS at all, and I think it lives up to the hype that preceded it.

Notifications, lets pop back to them 'quickly'. I mentioned that peek is great for when a notification comes in. Its almost a blessing in disguise, but doesnt quite cut it for me. You see before Peek came along, that cheeky little process where you can slide your current app out of the way to check what had come in, we had this great little thing called an LED ! It was a simple thing that with a little app called BeBuzz, could be customised to flash any colour or 2 colours for numerous different notifications. From individual contacts, right through to different apps. So popular was this behaviour, that Blackberry decided to write it straight into the new BB10 OS, because they KNEW how important it was to people on the go etc.
Im joking of course, there is no such setting, in fact there are very few easy to set settings for notifications, and certainly no individual sounds for each email account for example.
As I have blogged before, the notifications are one of THE biggest let downs of the whole of BB10. Surely as a business tool alone, the power user needs to know whats coming in, even when the phone is not in your hand. Its all very well being able to Peek, but if im not holding the phone, then how am I meant to tell.
As I have said before, come on Blackberry, buck your ideas up, there are SO many people ranting, blogging and posting on forums about this.

Case or no case? For me a simple answer, no case. I dont see the point of taking something thats been designed to be nice in the hand, then slapping a case over it. People dont walk about constantly dropping everything they carry, so why keep dropping your phone. Besides, I have insurance, so if the worst should happen its all going to be ok. After spending a week jumping in and out of my pocket, onto desks, tables and other hard surfaces, all is well, and its not chipping or scratching like some other popular black handsets out there of similar appearance.

Native apps, these have come under a lot of criticism due to their pretty poor usability, Twitter feed sharing is limited, Facebook cant get a straight timeline, Social Feeds has disappeared, Calender sync is terrible compared to OS7, with Google calenders importing new events but failing to export them to anything else. Again fingers crossed we will see some development there for the next update to the OS which will put it all back on track. There are other glitches like sometimes some lag in rotation of the screen, calender is a little twitchy at the moment about new events.
Then there is my biggest question, which now I remember I will go and test, but... On the homescreen or any other screen thats not an audio app, the volume rocker being pressed shows the speaker volume going up or down, then to vibrate, and eventually mute. Just like Android does.... Difference is, it seems to have no baring on anything, let alone profiles. Hmmm.




So bullet points.

Pros.
Great feel
Smooth OS and operation
Nice touchscreen
Great keyboard
Nice browser
Good camera (reviews all aside)
SD card expansion
Active panes work nicely with some apps

Cons
TOTALLY different OS to what BB users are used to
Poor quality device swap
Stripped down notifications
Still glitchy OS
Functions missing from native apps, or apps missing completely


All that said and done. Blackberry have done enough to convince me that BB10 shows hope and is a positive future for Blackberry users. With the Q coming soon I am sure I will find happiness once again, but the Z is a great handset for the touchscreen lover. I will be retaining the services of both I am sure.


Now my wish list.

Dear Blackberry.
Please can you address the following.

Return social feeds
Allow proper customisation of notifications again
If Bell are not making BeBuzz please make your own
Sort the double tap browser zoom
Make Facebook's newsfeed work properly
Sort calender glitch and sync
Tell WhatsApp to get on with it
Beg Spotify to get on board
Sort Twitter notification re-populating issue

Issues found with the Blackberry Z10, so far

This isn't a dig or a snipe, just an informative to Blackberry and anyone else who wants to know if there are any issues with the new OS and handset.
First issue is one I know is affecting other users, which is Twitter. Notifications come through fine for mentions and direct messages, but once deleted they will sporadically re-appear in the Hub. It is a reoccurring issue, and they just reappear whenever it suits. I have not yet found the trigger for it.

Then there is Facebook, notifications are a bit hit and miss at the moment, with the first few for a status coming through, then just stopping. The rest of the app seems to behave just fine, and super smooth. If you open the app rather than just relying on the Hub, the notifications are there. Which kind of detracts from the point of a unified Hub for notifications.

I'm sure both are going to be fixed and probably being looked into now.

The more serious one for me is the calender. When adding a new appointment, you open the calender, select add, then start entering the details. Title is fine, Location is fine, but as soon as you touch start time the calender app just closes, saving nothing. It does the same with the keyboard on or off the screen. To add a time, you have to save with a title and location only, re-open calender, and edit the appointment. Once in edit mode the fault does not reoccur.

To anyone who wants to mock and scoff, that's fine, especially with the calender it is a little embarrassing that its happening. I'm sure I will get a hard time about all the hype I have given the Z10, only for glitches to be found. But that's all they are, and the rest of the experience remains lovely.

A few follow up points, battery life still remains mediocre at best, and currently at the same level of use the S2 can outlast the Z10. Location services are off, NFC is off, Wifi remains on, strong 3G signal. Screen set to 30 second time out, and 50% brightness. Given that 4G is meant to be more power hungry, I'm glad at this stage that I remained on a 3G tariff.

Blackberry service update

Well we have waited long enough for some more information, and it would appear because the problem has hit the shores of Canada now, that suddenly RIM are doing everything in their power to get it resolved asap. Surprisingly they have also upped their game in communicating their issues too. Previously when searching the Blackberry site, service updates were impossible to find. However Blackberry UK have just tweeted a very handy link to their current service status...

So for those of you NOT on Twitter, here is the illusive link to their info page
RIM SERVICE STATUS

Suddenly the penny drops, and with the issue spreading and not shrinking, it becomes apparent that this is something really quite serious. Is it more than a core switch, is there something Blackberry are not telling us here. Could this reach Playstation preportions? Who knows eh, and we are unlikely to either, but with no info all we can do is speculate. With speculation comes panic, and with panic comes abandon ship.... How many customers will have jumped ship by the end of this outage I wonder.

Fingers crossed the next 24 hours will see a return to normal status..... I can hope anyway.