January 2005

My first mobile phone was a Nokia 3100, acquired from Comet for £49.95. This was an entry level model introduced in 2003. It had a basic square 128×128 pixel colour display and had no camera.

We did not spend a lot of time staring at the screen of these devices!

December 2006

Two years later I acquire my second phone - a Sony Ericsson K610i. This cost £15 a month over 18 months. The screen is now 176×220 pixels and it sports a 2MP camera.

Led Zeppelin

The Sony was a compact, attractive phone, but the only photos I retain from it are from a Led Zeppelin concert in December 2007. Zeppelin had reunited for the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at the O2 Arena, and Sam and I had obtained tickets in a draw. Wikipedia quotes the Guinness World Records 2009 as reporting that the show set a record at that time for the ″Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert″, with 20 million requests submitted online. We were clearly quite lucky!

2008

2008 sees a new Sony Ericsson join the stable - the Z750i. It is our first clamshell phone and features a larger 240 x 320 pixel screen.

It retains a 2MP camera but it now supports panoramic shots, as seen in one of only three photos I've retained. It was taken in August 2009 at the Hawk Conservancy Trust and captures the low-level vulture flyby.

Linda's phone

Linda acquires a rather attractive pink Motorola W377 clamshell phone.

It is quite low spec, with a small 128 x 160 pixel screen and a 0.3MP camera. However it is easy to use and pocketable, a good starter model for Linda. An early camera test was our Belgian canal holiday in 2008, and a phone picture of me in Ghent is included below.

Linda still has the phone, but it doesn't run and won't take a charge. It could well work with a new battery, and BQ50 batteries for these are still available for about £7. I last bought one in November 2014 for £3.99 on eBay. This extended the phone's life to 2015, at which point Linda took over my Blackberry Q10.

2009

In 2009 we acquire our last Sony Ericsson, a model T715. This is an attractive phone, is easy in the hand and features a slide-out keyboard. I was loathe to part with this and still own it!

The T715 has the same screen size as the Z750i, but an improved 3.15MP camera.

April 2014

Blackberry season

In 2014 I acquired the first of our Blackberry phones. It was a Q10 model bought on Amazon for £265.

This was an attractive, pocketable phone with a physical QWERTY keyboard and Blackberry's proprietary operating system.

One of Blackberry's standout features is their Hub, which consolidates messages from a variety of sources such as email, Whatsapp, Signal, SMS etc. I have installed both the Hub and Blackberry's launcher on all of my subsequent phones, including my Google Pixel 7 and Samsung's S10+ and Flip 6.

Another feature of this phone, of relevance here, is that the battery could be easily replaced, and in March 2017 I bought a replacement 2100mAh battery from Moby Memory for £7.99, which I consider a bargain.

June 2016

June 2016 sees me transferring the Q10 to Linda and buying a new Blackberry Priv (STV100-4) for £460 from the Blackberry online store.

Like the Sony Ericsson T715 all those years ago, this model has a slide out keyboard, although this time with the full Blackberry key layout. It is a significant step up from the Q10, having a larger 5.4″ 1440x2560 pixel screen and an 18MP camera. More significantly it has an Android operating system for the first time. The larger body can accommodate a higher capacity 3410mAh battery compared with the Q10's 2100mAh, but this time it's non-removable

1 November 2018

Linda replaces her Blackberry Q10 with the larger Blackberry Key2, obtained from Curry's for £539. This is a much larger device with a 4½″ 1080 x 1620 pixel screen and dual 12 MP cameras. It features a Li-Ion 3500 mAh 'non-removable' battery.

The phone now uses Google's Android, another break from the now unsupported proprietary Blackberry operating system.

As the phone retains its trademark physical keys and message hub, the transition is relatively smooth.

July 2019

In 2019 I acquired my first fully touch-screen phone, a 128GB Samsung Galaxy S10+ with no physical buttons. This had a 6.1″ 1440 x 3040 pixel display and three rear cameras of 16MP, 12MP and 12MP apiece. It featured a Li-Ion 3400 mAh non-removable battery.

I found the S10+ took good pictures but the in-screen fingerprint sensor always seemed temperamental.

October 2022

In October 2022 I traded in my S10+ for £190 against a 256GB Pixel 7 at £699 direct from Google.

The Pixel had a 6.3″ 1080 x 2400 pixel screen and dual 50MP (wide) and 12 MP (ultrawide) cameras. It had a Li-Ion 4355 mAh battery which again was non-removable.

The Pixel 7 was a well-regarded phone but to me the camera was less accomplished than the Samsung's. I subsequently traded it in for another Samsung, the folding Flip 6. This cost £850 direct from Samsung, reduced by a subsequent £160 from musicMagpie's purchase of the Pixel (they had quoted £190, but on receipt decided it had 'light cosmetic wear' despite it being in excellent condition)

November 2023

The battery on Linda's Blackberry Key2 was starting to fail. In October 2022 I had bought a replacement battery on eBay for £22. I had held off installing it as her battery was technically non-removable and I could not guarantee that the new eBay battery was sound.

However in November 2023 I obtained a replacement Key2 from eBay for a reasonable £380, which ensured that Linda would not be without a phone.

Fortunately the new Key2 was in excellent health, and Linda could continue using a Blackberry without interruption.

As the new Key2 is sound it becomes Linda's permanent phone, with her old model relegated to burner phone.

It won't actually be a burner phone, as it will have a traceable SIM card on a Lebara contract. It's a handy description however, and it sounds more racy than a 'spare' phone.

18 January 2024

So if you're still with us, here's the bit about changing the battery.

The replacement battery has a stated 3300mAh capacity compared with the original 3500mAh, but this is unlikely to be problematic.

There are many online guides for replacing Key2 batteries - given how many of these replacement batteries are available that's no surprise.

The sites I used were thankfully consistent and, as you probably guessed, they showed that I needed two tools - a hair dryer and a spudger kit.

Wikipedia describes a spudger as a tool with a wide flat-headed end that is used to separate pressure-fit plastic components without causing damage. My £3.46 kit from eBay has 23 components - some are spudgers, some are potentially useful tools and some are seemingly makeweights.

The first stage is to remove the Key2's rear cover. To soften the glue and make the plastic lugs less brittle the phone needs to be warmed up. I have a hot air gun that could do this, but the hair dryer is a less aggressive option.

The main problem is gauging how much heat to use.

Wikipedia says that the Blackberry market was worldwide, but for some reason excluding Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. This means that the Blackberry may have been sold in the Sahel region of Africa, taking in some of the hottest countries of the world - Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso. Let's assume the Key2 was a big success there.

The hair dryer is switched to its Sahel Summer setting, which is quite hot, and the Key2 is subjected to an African scorcher.

Various spudgers are now called upon to slowly ease off the plastic back against the pull of the glue, while taking care not to snap any of the 10 retaining lugs. The cover is actually quite flexible, which is just as well given how much it warps on removal.

The original battery is dated 21 May 2018 and warns that it should only be removed by an authorized repair facility otherwise the warranty will be void. This allows me to proceed, as Linda has authorised the kitchen as a repair facility and the warranty has long since expired.

A series of small cross-head screws need to be carefully removed, the first component to be detached being the loudspeaker module. These are still available, and Etel sell them for 299 Bangladeshi Taka - about £2!

The next task is to use a pointy spudger to prise off the two antenna/aerial connectors.

Next in line is the removal of the bracket assembly - particular care is required as even the Bangladesh store fails to stock this.

Fortunately the motherboard does not need to be removed. The battery can be disconnected and with difficulty unglued from its home of over 5 years.

The new battery is installed and the phone re-assembled with relative ease. There is no more destructive ungluing and I have my many photos to guide me.

The Key2 does not have an official water-resistance rating, possibly because of the construction of its keyboard. It is unlikely that my rebuild will have improved whatever resistance it had, but the phone spends very little time in damp environments:

The Future

Research in Motion (RIM) was founded in 1984 and developed the Blackberry range of consumer products. The company changed its name to Blackberry in 2013, but after about 10 years a decline in sales led to Blackberry transitioning to a purely cybersecurity firm.

Where does that leave us?

Well Blackberry's website states that 'While BlackBerry no longer provides customer support for legacy devices (smartphones and tablets), you may find the information you need in a downloadable user guide'. Needless to say, the Blackberry Key2 does not feature!

As for the Blackberry Hub+ Services and Launcher that we both use, they are both still supported by Blackberry for some reason. They obviously value the 89p they receive from me each month.