Geeky success...

[bovil]

OK, I just did something.

Something that's a relatively big deal (symbolically) for me as a new-ish BlackBerry admin.

I just upgraded my BlackBerry 8830 (which had been woefully stuck at OS 4.2 because of lack of support from the phone providers) to BlackBerry OS version 4.5. This is a bit tricker than it sounds, upgrading to an unsupported (by the provider, at least, it is RIM-supported) OS version.

It's not as simple as running the OS installer and letting the BlackBerry Desktop do the upgrade for you. It turns out that you have to:

1. Uninstall the earlier BlackBerry Handheld OS from your computer
2. Delete the vendor.xml and devices.xml file from the App Loader directory
3. Install the new (and correct for your handheld model) BlackBerry OS
4. Start the App Loader
5. remove the battery from your BlackBerry
6. Plug in the BlackBerry using USB
7. Click "next" in the App Loader as soon as you see "USB:Unknown" appear in the connection list
8. Plug in the battery
9. Pick the software to install
10. Install (allowing the phone to restart itself several times including waiting for the 507 error to clear)
11. Wait 10 minutes or so for the phone to reboot once it's installed

This is a risky process; if the install doesn't go well you'll have a brick at the end. It's possible to un-brick a phone by the same process (removing the new OS and installing back to an old OS provided by your cellular provider), but it can take a few tries.

The 4.5 OS is much improved over 4.2, though. If you're willing to take a big risk with your phone (and it's stuck at OS 4.2; it's not nearly as valuable upgrading from 4.3 as 4.5 from what I hear), hit google to get more details on the process.

I also twiddled my procmail recipes on my personal account. A few of them now drop copies of messages into /var/mail/attrembl so the BIS imap client service (crappiest imap client service ever, can't even select folders to watch) can get mail to my phone for me.