Tong Family

I’ve been using my 7230 faithfully for the last two years now. We got a pair when they shipped two years ago. Lately though, I’ve been having lots of trouble. The contacts won’t sync and have a strange error and the thing will randomly reinitialize itself. The Blackberry.net site is singularly useless for debugging, but in browsing t-mobile.com, I’m amazed to find that they’ve really upgraded their support.
But, if you actually upgrade, then the phone application in particular gets much better. You can actually read the incoming calls (it appears to not use the invisible system font, but picks up your choice of fonts and the letters are huge). Also the confusing phone screen is now much clearer and beside showing you the person who called, shows the number as well. Well worth the firmware upgrade.
Here are the recommendations on how to find the upgrade. The problem is that blackberry.net no longer puts upgrades on their site, so you have to splunking:
* BlackBerry 7230 Troubleshooting. To reset the handheld using the Application Loader:
Use the Backup and Restore tool to back up the data from your handheld to your computer before proceeding. Warning: These following steps will erase the data on the handheld:
## In the desktop manager, double-click the Application Loader icon. The Application Loader Wizard window will display.
## Click Next.
## In the Handheld Application Selection window, ensure that the appropriate applications are selected and click Next.
## The Completing the Application Loader Wizard will display. Click Advanced.
## In the Handheld Data Preservation window, select Erase all application data and Erase all currently installed applications, and click Next.
## Click Finish. The handheld resets. This may take several minutes.
## Verify that the cradle is plugged into the port that has been selected in the BlackBerry Desktop Manager.
## Open the Settings window: from the desktop manager within the Options menu, click Serial Settings. In the Port Number field, select None. Click Detect.
# Also make sure you have the latest version of the Desktop Manager that runs on the PC and also within the device itself. Amazingly on the “Technical Specifications”:http://www.t-mobile.com/products/handhelds/blackberry_6230/technical.asp?phoneid=196550&class=pda page there is now a check for “System Upgrade”:http://www.t-mobile.com/products/handhelds/blackberry_6230/technical.asp?phoneid=196550&class=pda so that you can now check the version ID and see if you need to update firmware. Confusing because it is not on the support page, but is actually in the products page. This is for the 6230 which is the black and white version BTW
# “Blackberry Upgrades”:http://www.t-mobile.com/bbupgrade/. Another hard to find page, this lists all the upgrades. Very useful if you have one of these devies are are trying to figure out where it went.