This happened to me, and I thought you might want to know this.
Yesterday I was leaving the Proidence Place Mall, and I don't know if you've been down there lately, but they've changed the parking so that you pay in the mall and then use your ticket to get out. Well, I paid, and left the garage, and got to the gate, put my ticket in, and nothing happened. So I tried again, and nothing happened. The third time I tried inserting my ticket, an error came up saying it couldn't be read.
I don't know if you're familiar with the exit on the Cityside garage at the mall, but the area leading up to the exit gates is a morass of concrete pillars and walls. Imagine my delight when I had to put the car into reverse and navigate all of that. Now imagine the delight of the people coming down the ramp on seeing me backing up in that area. Good times were had by all!
So I backed up and was able to get over to the one remaining lane with a person present. She looked at my ticket, agreed I had already paid in the mall, and let me leave with no additional charge.
Later, I stopped off at Madeira Liquors, and I had to pull my phone out of my pocket to get my wallet out. I was very surprised to see what came out with the phone. Stuck to the front of the phone in its holster was
.
So I played around with it a little. I put the paperclip down, touched the back of the holstered phone to it, and nothing happened. I touched the front to it, and it stuck. I took the phone out, and it wanted nothing to do with the paperclip.
I put my finger inside the holster and pushed on it from the inside, and, lo and behold, there in the lower front, was a little circle, about 1/3 of an inch (8 mm). 
This story ran a little longer than I wanted it to, but the bottom line is, there's a strong magnet in the holster that came with your BlackBerry. I think the BlackBerry uses this to figure out when it is in the holster. Make sure you keep credit cards, parking tickets, and 8-track tapes away from it.
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