Anyone who has had a smartphone fail on them before knows what I'm talking about. My beloved Blackberry Curve 8900 is like my lifeline to the world...or so it seems. Voice. Text. Email. Browsing. Apps. Maps. Memos. Calendar reminders. Pictures. It all suddenly ended one day last week. My Blackberry had started to act a little crazy. It was unable to stay on unless it was directly plugged into a charger. So everywhere I went, I plugged it in. If I didn't plug it in, it could never reboot on its own strength. 

Convinced that I had a faulty battery, I set out to find a replacement. Heading to my local all-inclusive battery store, the service rep tests the voltage on my existing battery and says, "It's fully charged." I say, "What?!??! But it doesn't stay on. It can't stay on. It can't even warm-up and start on its own." He goes to step number two and fully charges a new battery for my phone and sticks it into the Blackberry. 

Guess what the Blackberry says? It shows an icon that I've never seen before: a battery with a big red X on it. The phone was saying, "I don't like you battery!" It wasn't the wrong battery though, it was identical to the one I had just pulled out. 

Back and forth. Back and forth. The battery service rep is clearly disturbed by my Blackberry's behavior. He says, "I think you need a new Blackberry. It's not the battery, your battery continues to hold a charge and it for some reason doesn't like any of the other batteries I've put in it."

Graciously, the battery service rep loans me a Blackberry Pearl just until I decide which new phone I will purchase. I take my sim card out and stick it in the Pearl. I plug in my Curve to back up any pertinent data just in case I lose it forever. 

It's been three days now and you'll never guess what's happened. My Curve has not been plugged into a charger once and continues to stay on! So what's the problem?