[stevew]

My girlfriend's 9900 bricked yesterday. As many others have described, the battery was in the red...with maybe minutes left, when she threw it into the charge dock on Saturday night.

When she awoke, it was already in the flashing red light syndrome, but I discovered a few things while trying to unbrick it today.

1) It would NOT respond to the RIM javaloader when I tried to wipe the device ("could not open port...").
2) I pulled the battery /SIM and media card out then plugged it into the PC - and after a minute or so, I got the "no battery" symbol showing up on the device screen. Great I thought, so on I went to load the latest firmware.
3) I ran loader.exe and it saw the device and PIN, all the while showing the "no battery" symbol on screen.
4) I then continued and ran the upgrade to .474
5) It went right through the "erasing applications" step and "loading software" phases successfully.
5) It could NOT get through the "reconnecting to JVM" / reading configuration phase. Needless to say, it couldn't get through the installing applications phases either. All I could get, no matter what, was a "retry / connect" error, but as I mentioned before, it did actually load the software and that's as far as it goes.

I can always get it to load the software, but it always errors out on step 5 above. It seems to have something to do with the device going into the red (very low battery). She basically kills the battery each time she uses the device to the point where the radio shuts off.

I tried 3 new fully charged batteries, before, during and after, all to no avail. It's on a BES so at least it's all backed up, save for messages, which I don't care about since I have a hard backup that's only a few days old.

I have 2 other 9900's that I use, but I never let them go under 15% battery remaining. Her phone and my phones are only a few ESN's apart.

FWIW. I tried the update through DM, but it died at the same place.

Spoke to a RIM level 2 tech and repeated the same procedure again to no avail. The device was sent out for repair or replacement today and she's on a 9700 loaner right now.

Man these 9900's seem to have this bricking issue more than previous BB's I've had - and at least I could always recover those.

[chickens87]

Not sure if this would help but it's sort of similar.

The day after I got my phone I installed a bunch of apps and decided to reboot once at the end (always hitting "restart later"), when I finally reboot it it got stuck in a reboot cycle. Anyways I pulled the batter connected it to the loader and couldn't install the latest patch, failed at connecting to jvm.

I wiped it again and tried to install an older OS, the one that came with the phone, I think it was 247 or something and it worked like a charm. After installing the older one I was able to update to the newest one (from Wind) without a problem.

[stevew]

I had done the same thing with RIM support today but to no avail. It went out for repair today...
I wish I could have fixed it doing what you did.

[asteele]

It's so strange - and damn annoying!

Mine went very low on the battery so it was in the red and automatically turned the radio off, but the phone still worked for non-radio use anyway.

I then had it on the mains charger, and I checked it a little while later and it was up to around 30%, the radio had been turned back on automatically - and I saw that it had caught up on some new email messages.

I assumed it was all fine, but the next morning it was very much dead.

Mine was sent for repair 3 weeks ago, no news at all.

I bought a 2nd 9900, which is running the very latest OS - and works great, battery is down to around 50% at the end of the day, which is superb - and my connectibity gremlins appear to have been addressed too, but I am not sure how much of that is OS related or down to some phone network improvements in my area.

I am still thankful each morning when I confirm that No. 2 9900 is still working fine - it would be nice to hear something from RIM about this problem, surely the carriers are fed up with the massive number of returns that they are having to handle!

[stevew]

I remember when yours bricked. Mine have not to date, but I'm constantly wiping and upgrading OS's...charging at no less than 25% and keeping my message database groomed for all messages. My girlfriend, like probably most women, doesn't know what a charger looks like and her phone shows like 175 unread message - on a good day. She's a perfect candidate for bricking the already delicate 9900, and so she did.

[asteele]

...wow, but what do you think she did which caused it to brick? That's the million dollar question!

[Preroll]

I'm still on the original .254 OS and have had the battery level as low as 5%. Haven't seen any issues yet.

Has this issue been pinpointed to the later OS release or is it just still speculation at this point? I was going to upgrade to the later OS but I may hold off a bit longer.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by asteele

...wow, but what do you think she did which caused it to brick? That's the million dollar question!

I know what she did -

Low/dead battery every day before charging
Hundreds of unread e-mails/texts just sitting there on the device. No message grooming whatsoever, growing to a corrupted DB I'm sure.
The battery deal for me, is only the trigger - not the cause. I'm not sure what else she does that could cause this, but they're not bricking randomly. They brick due to something, even if it is bad code. There are conditions that have to be met for the phone to brick..and she finds ways to meet them! LOL

[SmoothOperator]

Dude, I think I'll stick to my 9700 until the new 9950 or whatever comes out.

[mobileunlocked]

Is this a 9900 issue or a bbOS issue?

[Cooper]

As I posted in my 'Build quality' rant I've seen two devices completely dead. Won't detect VIA USB, and doesn't even charge.

I don't know what happened to my device or my bosses, but my replacement is holding up alright. My boss however refuses to call Rogers to get a replacement, he wants me to do it.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by mobileunlocked

Is this a 9900 issue or a bbOS issue?

No one really knows for sure. It could be or the other or both. BB's brick, regardless of the OS/Device. I'm not sure if we're seeing so many because there are so many out there, or it's a higher percentage on the 99xx.

[jgudnas]

This morning my thrid (yes thrid) 9900 bricked itself while i slept.
At first, i thought it was caused by using the high capacity charger (playbook), so after the second bricked itself, i started using a standard charger and the charging pod... oh well, another brick this am.

as for comments above about not deleting messages, etc.. I have had almost every blackberry right back to the 800, and i never delete or groom my message database, usually having over a year of history on my device.. i have not changed any habits with the bold, it just seems the 9900 has issues..