8900 RIM evaluation unit - special OS build?
 

Happy Holidays, BBForums

I have a friend who was sent an unlocked evaluation 8900, and he asked me if I wanted to play with it. It came loaded with appver 4.6.1.19, and is quite buggy, (random resets, resets when trying to use the camera, numerous dead spots where the radio drops out and picks back up in a few minutes)

I asked him if I could upgrade the OS to something more current, but he's worried about a special "developer build" (since it came with the EScreen enabled) and said that if I found a way to back up every file on the BB (which I don't believe is possible) or if I proved that it wasn't a special dev build, I could upgrade the OS.

Since, in my 3 years or so of tinkering with BBs, I haven't found anything to entirely back up the OS, my question is: Is there a special developer build of 4.6 on the evaluation 8900s?

You're stuck. You will not be able to upgrade the OS past a specific build.

you can try to upgrade to the latest build, but like Jason said it may not work

i remember when kevin at crackberry had a eval unit of the bold, he could only upgrade to a specific OS and that was that, no more for him

I got an evaluation unit. And I was able to upgrade it from 4.6.1.19 to 4.6.1.75 and later to 4.6.1.76. I heard rumours RIM is now shipping evaluation units with 4.6.1.75.

Press ALT-SHIFT-H. If you get a different diagnostics screen you won't be able to update.

4.6.1.75 worked fine. .76 won't show my SDcard on any PC when connected with USB. I am able to acces it via media manager in DTM though.

You are wrong ;-) If the hardware is the final version, then upgrading is no issue on eval units. I had many BB eval units and never had problems upgrading them to the final OS firmware. Kevin may had the problems because the hardware wasn't final. But in any case, the engineering screens need to be unlocked again as the are going to disappear after the upgrade.

I would venture to say, if your device doesn't have any watermarks show up, you'll be able to update. Have you tried updating to Roger's .94??

Is there any way to tell if the hardware is final or not?

Edit:
With watermarks, do you mean the "vendor" bootup screen that has the BB logo, "property of rim" and all that?

Not the easy way... On the label under the battery does it have "BlackBerry 8900" printed?

Hmm. I suppose it doesn't. The IMEI starts with "00..." instead of "35..." like the 7290/8100/8320 I have here, too.

If it doesn't have the product name printed, then it is very likely that it is a non-final hardware. On almost all eval units, the IMEI starts with 00, regardless if it is final hardware or not.

Mine is non-final. It does not say 8900 under the battery and the IMEI start with 00. Still I was able to update the device. I am glad I was able to because before the update the BB was unstable with constant reboots :cry:. Let's hope the final ones come with better sound quality.

I agree, the echo is quite noticeable, but I can live with it. Also, I installed both 4.6.1.76 and 4.6.1.94 on my computer and plugged the 8900 into DM to check the version of the software it wants to upgrade to, and it references the files in 4.6.1.94, so I should be good, no?

The Desktop Manager only looks at the highest version. It doesn't matter that you have both. Because .94 is the highest version it can find it will propose only that one.

I hesitate to go to .94 seeing that people are complaining about that version. As far as I know any version from .77 to .101 is unstable. At the same time Rogers does put .94 on his devices which should point out that .94 is stable. :?

Does that mean that even though it says that it'll load that version, it may not upgrade the files?

It will load the highest version you have installed on the PC. Have you tried it yet......

No.

I'm sorry about running around in circles, I was just a bit weary about trying to load the latest software on it. I've wiped/reloaded/unlocked quite a few blackberrys, but this is the first eval unit I've played with and certainly didn't want to brick it.

I'm loading .94 onto it now.

You have a evaluation unit just like me. If I can you do it, you can do it. ;-)

I have bricked a device twice. One was already broken and I was the users last hope. The other was my own which I fixed with JL_cmd.

I will try .94 tomorrow and if it does not work I will go back to .76. :razz:

lol, thanks :smile:

I've bricked one before and fixed it the same way, luckily I haven't had any problems since then.

I upgraded to .94 and everything seems fine so far. (about 3.5 minutes, so take it with a grain of salt ;-) )

EScreen came unlocked, so I think the VendorID=1 is what does that.

Thanks for your help everyone,
Happy Holidays, and to a safe and prosperous New Year

I had an evaluation Curve 8320 and I was able to upgrade it without any issues.But I'm not sure if I would do it on a newer unit like the 8900 though but that's just me.