BlackBerry Bold Firmware Upgrade

I upgraded the firmware on my BlackBerry Bold 9000 from the default 4.6.0.167 to the 4.6.0.266 version using the instructions available on the CrackBerry.com forums. I went ahead and followed the directions, and the flash went successfully. The majority of my settings were restored. I had to enter user names and passwords for the YouMail client and the Google Apps sync client. However, the Pandora client retained its credentials correctly.

I had decided to upgrade my firmware because I had begun experiencing a lot of dropped calls and data connectivity issues. I often had to browse to a website or turn the radio off and on to start receiving email again. My Bold caused my speakers to hum constantly as it toggled between 3G and EDGE networks. After the firmware upgrade, the data connectivity issues and the speaker hum have gone away, but the phone still drops calls more often than it should. Many people had reported a battery life improvement relative to the 167 firmware. I didn’t notice this initially; however, when I updated the YouMail client on my BlackBerry, I discovered a new option to disable polling for new voice mails. Once I disabled that, my battery life improved substantially. After the update, I was also able to connect to Marquette University’s wireless network from my phone. It’s possible I had done something wrong in the past; however, I suspect the version fixed some little bug that made it incompatible with the wireless network on campus.

Despite AT&T’s delay in releasing updates for the Bold, I recommend this update if you are experiencing any problems with the current version of the firmware.

Edit: After using the new firmware for a while, I noticed the annoyance of the Visual Voice Mail icon in the application switcher. Since I cannot quit the application, I decided to find a way to remove it. A forum post on PinStack.com has the solution:

Another option is to simply remove all the vvm cod files from the java folder (7 of them) and then start up dm or apploader and run the through the process. It should tell you that it doesn’t recognize those files and remove them.

java folder is located: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\Shared\Loader Files\9000-v4.6.0.247_P4.0.0.206

Of course the version number is different, but once I removed the files and ran the loader again, the icon disappeared.