Even as somebody who streams dozens of radio stations a week, I resisted the iPhone or any other smart phone for a long time. It was a bad economy. It seemed like a big indulgence for somebody whose main interest in the iPhone was as a transistor radio. My cellphone and Blackberry, although now museum pieces, worked perfectly fine, and so what if I was embarrassed to pull them out at a tableful of radio people?

But a week ago, I went and bought myself a Blackberry Curve through Verizon.

Two days ago, I returned it.

In my five days as a Curve owner, there were five hours at the Verizon store, maybe an equal number of hours of actual useful streaming, and a largely unsatisfying experience not unlike the my very first days of streaming audio in the mid-to-late ’90s. There was also that Blackberry system crash that you may have read something about. In all, it wasn’t quite the experience I expected to have, given all the attention said to have gone into the development of new apps.

So why the Curve? I was happy with Verizon. The Curve supported WunderRadio, the app with RadioTime’s robust directory of stations—and the app that I most cared about having; WunderRadio wasn’t yet on the more iPhone-like Blackberry Storm. I also chose the Curve over iPhone because in my tower-conscious town, Verizon’s coverage was thought to be much better than that of AT&T. And, oh yeah, there was AT&T Mobility president Ralph DeLaVega. who wanted to discourage people from using streaming apps or charge them more for it. He has since backed away from some of those comments.

The first problem with the Curve came almost immediately when the Blackberry App Store wouldn’t let me download WunderRadio. The WR Website said that WR supported the Curve. The App Store said it wasn’t available on my combination of device and carrier. I was able to get a direct link to download WunderRadio. (Then again, I’m in the business and knew who to ask.) And the directory was indeed terrific. But 95% of the stations I chose refused to play—they loaded, they buffered, and then they stopped. A few stations played, but buffered beyond the point of being listenable. No more than two or three of the dozens of stations I tried actually streamed.

I had no trouble installing Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio. I had no trouble getting iHeartRadio stations to start playing. The trouble came about 45-seconds in when the audio I was listening to suddenly slowed way down. It didn’t cut in and out like typical buffering. It just switched from 45 to 33 RPM. It was as if I had suddenly installed an app called “I Am DJ Screw” (the late Houston Hip-Hop legend who slowed every song down to a crawl).

The CBS Radio player wouldn’t install either. I found out later that unlike WunderRadio, it was genuinely not available on the Curve.

Live 365 installed. It did the same thing as WunderRadio. Its handful of free channels would load and buffer, but not actually play.

I couldn’t install FlyCast because I did not have a supplemental memory card. Could this have been the problem with the other apps? On my third trip to the Verizon store, they did try installing a memory card, which did not help the iHeartRadio problem. (We didn’t try it with the other apps.)

So what did work?

Nobex Radio Companion, which specializes in Blackberry, was the only stream aggregation app that consistently worked for me. Its directory didn’t include Clear Channel stations. But it had more than enough audio to keep me busy. And although foreign stations were supposedly part of the premium version, London’s Capital Radio was still free.

Pandora worked. I knew quickly why Pandora had picked up such steam on the iPhone and other mobile devices. Its ease of use was much greater. (I did not try Slacker.)

But that was it. It was like being an iMac user in those pre-iPod days when station streams were developed for Windows first—meaning that users had access to about 60% of streaming stations, at best. (Then stations would re-do their embedded player, develop Windows first, and again leave Mac users with nothing for another six months.) And, of course, buffering made listening something you did only if you really wanted to hear a station. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy driving to work on Tuesday morning listening to Capital Radio. But I resented not having everything I paid for.

Not even my tech-savvy friends knew why I was having such difficulties, except to express surprise at my choice of phone. “Maybe it’s the Curve itself, which doesn’t have a rep as a multimedia phone (like, say, the Storm does),” was one typical response. “Droid, backed with Google technology, may well work better than the more corporate e-mail focused Blackberry technology,” said somebody else.

I made two trips to the Verizon store for tech support. The first time, they suggested I uninstall and reinstall iHeartRadio. The second time, they suggested that again. Then they suggested wiping out everything on the phone and starting over. When I balked, they offered me a replacement phone, (it was somehow less onerous starting over on a new phone) which, when it materialized, looked considerably less mint than the one I’d come in with. While it was being activated, the Blackberry system went down. Nearly two hours after coming in, I walked out with a phone that not only didn’t get streaming audio, I couldn’t even activate it for e-mail. That night, with Blackberry still down, I returned the phone.

Because the problems with loading audio were so similar, I think the chances are excellent that the issue was at the Blackberry end and perhaps related to the overtaxed system that had already gone down before I bought the phone. I am sure that my problem will now be easily parsed by some reader and my response will seem draconian. Suffice it to say that I had more access to those involved in the apps themselves than the average user, and I didn’t get a lot of good answers. And since almost nobody else will be buying a smartphone for the primary purpose of streaming radio, few will have even as much patience as I did.

So last night I swallowed my objections to AT&T and bought an iPhone. I’m sure when I start using it as a phone, my new user’s enthusiasm may be tempered. (And for everybody who’s had an iPhone for several years, I’ll spare you that newbie excitement.) But all the streaming apps were installed and working within minutes. And trying to stream through the Curve felt like using the Bulgarian state-issued People’s Phone.

The whole experience suggests that radio’s capabilities on multiple platforms haven’t quite caught up with its aspirations—at least not everywhere. And the 1998 experience of having a station talk about its stream—that just didn’t happen to work on your computer—is no more acceptable a decade later when so much is at stake.