Your cellular carrier likely isn’t making the most recent version of your Blackberry’s software available to you. Usually they don’t want to support a newer version, or don’t want subscribers to have access to new features until they find a way to make money from them. However, if any carrier has a newer version of software, you can have it too. Here’s how it works:
- Google for this: “software download for” welcome site:blackberry.com to find the most recent version of software for your phone. This may take some searching, as there’s about 50 different carriers. I have a 7290, and Cincinnati Bell had version 4.1.0.379, much better than Rogers’ 4.0.2
- Download and install the software
- Open the file C:Program FilesCommon FilesResearch In MotionAppLoaderVendor.xml in Notepad
- Search for the name of the provider whose software you downloaded. In my case, I searched for “Cincinnati” to find the right section: <vendor id=”0x87″ Name=”Cincinnati Bell”>
- Inside that provider’s section of the file (the section ends at the </vendor> line,) find the subsection corresponding to the version you downloaded. Mine was: <bundle id=”System” version=”4.1.0.379″>
- Copy that “bundle” subsection in its entirety, which should be 3 lines, like my example:
<bundle id="System" version="4.1.0.379">
<devicehwid> 0x94000903 0x9c000503</devicehwid>
</bundle>If you want to double check that this is really for your device, the file C:Program FilesCommon FilesResearch In MotionAppLoaderdevice.xml has a list of all the hardware IDs with model numbers. My device ID is 0x9c000503, which I can see is included in the line above.
- Search for your actual provider. I searched for Rogers and found this: <vendor id=”0x6B” Name=”Rogers”>
- Paste the “bundle” subsection into your provider’s section (above the </vendor> line)
- Start the desktop software and plug in. Your handheld should be upgraded shortly
That XML file keeps track of which carrier is allowed to have a given version of the Blackberry OS. All I did was say “A handheld from Rogers is allowed to have version 4.1.0.379 if it connects.”