[eLuke455]

Some of you may been suffering from difficulties installing the latest version of Google Maps on a Blackberry 9000.

I have found a work-around that works for me.

All of my software is up to date. Your situation might vary. I am with Telstra (Australia), have BES, Data Plan and WAP enabled.

If you install Google Maps v2.3.1 , and get the "Network unavailable...etc" message, you can resolve the issue by doing the following.

(1) Uninstall Google Maps v2.3.1.

(2) Send this link to your BlackBerry, download it via your broswer and install it.
m.google.com/gmm/apps/v1.6.4/L1/gmaps-BlackBerry-8700_v4_1_L1.jad

Start the application.

Yes - it is for the wrong version of phone, but it loads and runs on a 9000 (but will only look for a bluetooth GPS, and does not recognise the internal GPS)

Now close the application.

(3) Send this link to your BlackBerry, download it via your browser and install it.
m.google.com/gmm/apps/v2.2.2/en/BlackBerry-42/GoogleMaps.jad?dc=gorganic&ver=v2.2.2

When installing, select upgrade and keep settings.

Start the application.

(this will work with your internal GPS if you want to stop here, but street view does not work).

You can now close the application.

(4) Now go to m.google.com/maps and download and install the latest version.

Select upgrade and keep settings.

After the install, the phone will want to re-boot.

Now wait for the phone to re-boot, start Google Maps and wait. It takes 10-30 seconds and eventually starts up correctly without any error messages.

Please don't ask me why this works - I would not have a clue. I just applied my "hacker" mentally from 20 years ago and didn't give up when I got stuck with the latest google maps release.

I'm not sure if steps (2) and (3) are required, or if you can go strait to step (3), but this is exactly what I did and it works for me.

Good bye and good luck!

Luke