How to upgrade your Blackberry 9700 to the OS 6.0: A comprehensive guide

As some may know, I lost my Blackberry 9700 on my birthday. Not such a pleasant experience but I was not so worried because I backed up my phone data about 2 days before then. Right now, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to do a back up.

I got another Blackberry 9700 because I am still of the opinion that that model is the best. I am not crazy about the Bold3 or the Blackberry Torch.

Well, restoring data to the new phone was awesome. Took me about 5minutes and right now here’s a list of all the things I got back:

• my notes,
• call history,
• phone contacts,
• alarm settings,
• calendar entries,
• personalized settings,
• sms,
• blackberry messenger contacts
• autotext
• browser bookmarks and history
• alarm clock settings

So don’t forget to do that. You have to download the latest Blackberry Desktop Manager for this. Very important!

Well, back to the main!

I made up my mind to upgrade my OS to the leaked OS 6 version so I can at least have something different even though I was using the same Blackberry model. It worked just perfect and this tutorial, if you follow through will take you about 1hour.

Please note, I won’t take responsibilities for any damage to your mobile. THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL RELEASE BUT A LEAKED VERSION. This may void your contract with your carrier or phone company.

But you just need to love the interface. Here is a video of how the interface looks. Here is a Youtube video of what it will look like.

 

Updates: It has not been tested on OS 7 and up.

One of the new features that I loved was the Social Feeds application which aggregates all status messages from your social networks, facebook, yahoo messenger, twitter, blackberry messenger, gtalk in one place. Also, it has a cool RSS feed reader. This will help bring your blogs and websites to you instead of you going to them. The screenshot in the gallery at the bottom shows an aggregation of feeds from this website.

Another feature is the internal search. Typing a contact name on the homescreen will return all mentions of the name from emails, address books, chat messages, Google Local Search, calendars, SMS. This is just awesome!

The web browser is awesome! You may want to throw away your Opera Mini for Blackberry as this browser allows multiple tabs.

If you are ready to take the bold step like I did, let’s begin. Here are the steps.

1. Download the leaked 9700 OS 6.0.0.344. This download is about 150MB.
2. If you haven’t downloaded and installed the latest Blackberry Desktop Manager, click here. After installation, click on ‘Back up’ to back up your device. Depending on your processor, this should take you about 5minutes but follow instructions. You can back up all your media assets.
3. Once you have downloaded the 9700 OS 6.0.0.344 software, click on the downloaded file. This should take you to a set up process. Install the application.
4. This is the time where you connect your Blackberry 9700 to your computer through the USB port. (If you can connect with a rope, please teach me). If your Blackberry Desktop Manager opens, close it. We don’t need it this time.
5. Open the downloaded application’s file by going to the directory C:\program files\common files\research in motion\apploader\
6. This next step is really important. There is a file in that directory called Vendor.xml. Please change the name of that file to something else. Anything. You could change it to seyekuyinu.xml if you want. Or you could even delete it.
7. This is item number 7! In that directory, there is a file named loader.exe. It’s most likely has a mobile phone icon. Click on it. Follow the instructions on screen. Pay close attention to the applications you want installed and the ones you don’t want installed. If you are in Nigeria, I will personally advice you to leave checked the Facebook, Twitter, Social Feeds applications.
8. Next it will ask you if you want to make a back up of your device and restore 3rd party applications, I chose the recommended option which is to back up. I think you should also.
9. The installation will start. It may take about 30minutes or less. This is where you grab a magazine, watch the latest episode of Desperate Housewives or Cow and Chicken. You should see at the end of this stage, a screen showing a different Blackberry loading screen on your mobile. This is your new OS starting up.
10. When it loads to the new OS, I recommend you unplug your USB cable then do a battery pull. It should load slightly faster.
11. Reconnect your Blackberry to your computer and start up the Blackberry Device Manager. From there, select Device > Restore. Oh well, there you go! Your new OS.