Blackberry 9900/9930

Yas786 · 20 Oct 2011 at 23:33

Magic_x_uk said:
Can someone link me to the latest OS/firmware.

Do I need it? Got my BB9900 from Orange yesterday. Slowly getting used to it. Certainly a step up from my 8900 from the last 22 months.

Keep forgetting it has a touch screen though

I have at the moment
7.0 bundle 1672 (V7.0.0.353,platform 5.0.0.544)

Is that latest and if not. Do I need to upgrade?

Thanks.

353 is a decent OS, i was running it a while ago but ive moved onto 440, which isnt official but latest is 439 at the moment...go to http://crackberry.com/official-os-700439-blackberry-bold-9900-wind for the latest OS.

Big Chris · 21 Oct 2011 at 09:01

cheechm said:
I'm never sure, but I doubt it uses too much anyway. Think of it as a basic messaging like texts. Each character is a byte. So you have plenty of "room to manoeuvre".

I'm assuming it only uses juice when it's sending/receiving messages, and not all the time?

If I close the app then I still get messages when people send them, so I assume it's always connected in some way? This is the first internet phone I've had so still a bit aprehensive about costs!

Myshra · 21 Oct 2011 at 09:25

Redman said:
Another silly question. Do phones 4 u brand their phones?

No (98% of the time), they buy OEM palettes then just put SIMs in them as needed.

Big Chris said:
Anyone use Whatsapp? A bunch of my mates are on it so I'm giving it a go, seems pretty cool so far. Does it fully close when you close it though? Or is it eating into my 500MB even when nothing's going on? Using it on WiFi at home but concerned about when I'm out and about.

Whatsapp does run 24/7 using what I'd refer to as a listener service. When you're on the main app then it's using lets say, full power, but when you're doing something else it goes into low power mode where it will just have a service that listens to comms from the central server (whatsapp is push). It will eat some battery and RAM but not a great deal and it's pretty efficient for an app, not a lot to worry about and there are much worse.

If you understand TCP/IP then a listener service basically is a TCP conn with a HUGE timeout that's only refreshed over x hours IIRC.

Big Chris · 21 Oct 2011 at 09:28

Myshra said:
Whatsapp does run 24/7 using what I'd refer to as a listener service. When you're on the main app then it's using lets say, full power, but when you're doing something else it goes into low power mode where it will just have a service that listens to comms from the central server (whatsapp is push). It will eat some battery and RAM but not a great deal and it's pretty efficient for an app, not a lot to worry about and there are much worse.

If you understand TCP/IP then a listener service basically is a TCP conn with a HUGE timeout that's only refreshed over x hours IIRC.

I think I chose then wrong word when I said 'juice', I meant chunks of internet, as in is it costing to have it sitting there listening?

tom_e · 21 Oct 2011 at 09:33

Big Chris said:
I think I chose then wrong word when I said 'juice', I meant chunks of internet, as in is it costing to have it sitting there listening?

I don't think so, from my understanding due to the push nature of the service it just sits there listening for something being sent from the whatsapp server which is when it will use bandwidth, it may send the odd very small bit of data back to the whatsapp server but absolutely nothing to worry about, especially with 500mb I've not used over 150mb a month on my BB in the last few months.

Myshra · 21 Oct 2011 at 09:33

Yeah but we are talking a few KB per day rather than MB. The preview images are tiny as well, circa 4-5KB. A general rule of thumb is 1 tiny pic is worth about 5000 characters, that's how much more efficient text is. If you ever view a youtube video for example it's probably taken more data than your entire addressbook and SMS's you've possibly sent in your lifetime.

Big Chris · 21 Oct 2011 at 09:44

Good stuff, that's all I needed to know.

You're a handy guy to have around Myshra, cheers!

Redman · 21 Oct 2011 at 10:28

Big Chris said:
You're a handy guy to have around Myshra, cheers!

And I'll second that, cheers

31satara · 22 Oct 2011 at 16:17

I've got a new orange panther plan with two swapables. However can't seem to get anything to work and the three people i've spoken to at orange can't seem to help (I'm also awaiting a reply by email). I have a BB torch 9810, os 7. I notice on this thread that some users do seem to be getting their swapables. I'd be grateful if those people could let me know what they do have working on which phone and os. And maybe how they managed to sort it if it wasn't as straightforward as the orange website makes out. Thanks.

Magic_x_uk · 22 Oct 2011 at 21:36

31satara said:
I've got a new orange panther plan with two swapables. However can't seem to get anything to work and the three people i've spoken to at orange can't seem to help (I'm also awaiting a reply by email). I have a BB torch 9810, os 7. I notice on this thread that some users do seem to be getting their swapables. I'd be grateful if those people could let me know what they do have working on which phone and os. And maybe how they managed to sort it if it wasn't as straightforward as the orange website makes out. Thanks.

Have you upgraded ? as I have upgraded to the new 9900 from the 8900 and I too have 2 swapables via Panther. BUT my new contract does not start for another 2 weeks so I cannot use the swapables till then.

Could this be your problem ?

31satara · 22 Oct 2011 at 22:18

No, new contract. The problem seems to be either to do with the phone/os not being compatable or that orange have launched something that they haven't really sorted yet and seem to be making it up as they go along! (And not informing their customer services). Hence the request to see if anyone is getting the swapables as advertised - especially on the newer blackberrys.

Magic_x_uk · 22 Oct 2011 at 23:42

Tell you what, the official bb charging pod / desktop charger looks nice but is crap compared to the one for the bb8900. You can't just put it in, you have to ensure it is perfectly in, fit it not great. Not happy with it for £22.

You really have to check it is in correctly. The one for the 8900 you could throw it in & it would charge fine.

jskalsey · 23 Oct 2011 at 11:29

31satara said:
No, new contract. The problem seems to be either to do with the phone/os not being compatable or that orange have launched something that they haven't really sorted yet and seem to be making it up as they go along! (And not informing their customer services). Hence the request to see if anyone is getting the swapables as advertised - especially on the newer blackberrys.

As mentioned by Myshra before, there is not much info about swapables available and you're right customer services dont seem to know much about them or BB's

I've got Sky TV and Deezer as swapables. Deezer I configured myself, 150 were no help at all, and with Sky TV it just buffered for the first 5 days and now it seems to be working fine (watched the whole Liverpool game fine on ESPN yesterday) . Nothing changed in my software or settings on my 9900.

They are great add-on's and from what i've been told (not 100% sure of this) they dont use your monthly data, which ones have you got?

jskalsey · 23 Oct 2011 at 11:31

31satara said:
I've got a new orange panther plan with two swapables. However can't seem to get anything to work and the three people i've spoken to at orange can't seem to help (I'm also awaiting a reply by email). I have a BB torch 9810, os 7. I notice on this thread that some users do seem to be getting their swapables. I'd be grateful if those people could let me know what they do have working on which phone and os. And maybe how they managed to sort it if it wasn't as straightforward as the orange website makes out. Thanks.

I have them working fine on my 9900, on orange factory settings, firmware 353

31satara · 23 Oct 2011 at 16:21

Thanks for the info js. At the start when you went to the swapables page were they all available? Mine only had mobile tv and astrology as options. I 'swapped in' the mobile tv which it accepted but then when I tried to use it it said my handset was not compatable. Like you, I really wanted the sky and deezer. I tried going to deezer but it required an automatic authentication from orange which didn't happen!

Yas786 · 23 Oct 2011 at 16:46

Magic_x_uk said:
Tell you what, the official bb charging pod / desktop charger looks nice but is crap compared to the one for the bb8900. You can't just put it in, you have to ensure it is perfectly in, fit it not great. Not happy with it for £22.

You really have to check it is in correctly. The one for the 8900 you could throw it in & it would charge fine.

Yep its a bit of a hassle to get the phone in right and get it to charge..think its because of the 9900s charging contact.

But ive got mine down to a fine art now...just takes a bit of fiddling around.

chrismscotland · 23 Oct 2011 at 23:19

I've had 2 now, one which was missing the plug! It seemed very fiddly but the second dock seems to have a better fit, maybe differs from dock to dock. My 9900 spends most of its time docked when I'm in the house as I just use Blackberry Bridge on my Playbook when I'm home now for most things!

Big Chris · 24 Oct 2011 at 16:09

Anyone else having trouble receiving entire text messages with their 9900? I keep getting [receiving text] midway through messages and the only way to get the remaining text is to do a battery pull (turning off/on doesn't help).

I've got full 3G reception and it's not even happening with particularly long messages but it's a pain in the ass.

Big Chris · 24 Oct 2011 at 16:21

Also, the 'you've got a new message/missed call/email' LED keeps flashing even though there's nothing unread :confused:

(I've checked through all the apps, inboxes etc and there's definitely nothing outstanding)

Yas786 · 24 Oct 2011 at 16:27

Big Chris said:
Anyone else having trouble receiving entire text messages with their 9900? I keep getting [receiving text] midway through messages and the only way to get the remaining text is to do a battery pull (turning off/on doesn't help).

I've got full 3G reception and it's not even happening with particularly long messages but it's a pain in the ass.

Big Chris said:
Also, the 'you've got a new message/missed call/email' LED keeps flashing even though there's nothing unread (I've checked through all the apps, inboxes etc and there's definitely nothing outstanding)

Nope none of those problems...but mines unbranded and not a network model...ive found in the past, i have a vodafone branded 9780, well it belongs to my gf now and that used to have the same problem...i find that network branded phones tend to be the most buggiest imho...not saying for sure but imo and thats why i stay away from them.

What OS you running??..try 353 or the leaked 440 which im running and have none of those issues at all.