So how do you feel about your top of the line Blackberry Bold when you put it against you friend’s Blackberry Storm? Besides a vibrant touchscreen, you’d notice the glowing icons and a super slick OS for which you probably would have to wait for a few more months (that’s if T-Mobile/Att ever plan to roll out an update).
Its unfortunate to see that a device as elegant as Bold 9700 runs a dated OS for which the carriers aren’t ready to provide an over the air update. The newer versions of Curve would probably have OS 6, and then all you can do is to call customer service and yell for a date that they would come up with for an update – it probably won’t be something a tele-call executive would ever know about

So if you are cribbing about trying the new OS 6 for Blackberry, here’s a way you could do so. I have upgraded my Blackberry Bold 9700 from OS 5 to OS 6.0.0.448 and I must admit that never in the past few years have I see such a dramatic makeover of a mobile operating system. Be it the looks, speed, responsiveness, UI, icons, scroll or general object arrangement – it all fits in very well in the OS 6.
In this tutorial I am going to walk you through the steps to upgrade your Blackberry Bold 9700 running OS 5 to OS 6.0.0.448

Follow this tutorial at your own risk. Upgrading to an unofficial release of the OS would void your phone’s warranty

Steps:-

1. To start with, power up your blackberry and make sure its battery is full on juice.
2. Connect your blackberry to your PC (we don’t have an installer for Mac yet… so non-PC guys might just have to wait).
3. Make a backup of your blackberry (contacts, emails, messages etc) and then Shutdown/ Close your Blackberry Desktop manager
4. Download this executable file. Unzip the file and run the executable. It looks the same as your desktop manager.
5. Now the steps are pretty intuitive. The program shows the current version of OS running on your phone and to which it would get upgraded to. Click on the Update button and click Next whenever required.
6. Sit tight as it might take a few minutes for your phone to be wiped and new OS be installed
7. After you’re through the installation there are just a couple of more steps left:-
1. In the steps below, I am assuming you have Windows installed on the C drive. If not, then please replace C: with the drive where you have Windows installed
2. If you are a T-Mobile user, then navigate to C:\Program Files\ Common Files\ Research In Motion\ Shared\ Loader Files\ 9700M_v6.0.0.344_P6.6.0.50\ Java and delete the following 2 files:-
   
   net_rim_theme_tmobile_BlackBerry6_480x36­0_b.cod
   
   net_rim_theme_tmobileeu_BlackBerry6_480x­360_b.cod
8. Now navigate to C:\ Program Files\ Common Files\ Research In Motion\ AppLoader and delete vendor.xml
9. The same directory also has Loader.exe, run it. Your phone will get wiped off again, but this time it will be much faster.
10. That’s it! You have OS 6 up and running on your Blackberry Bold 9700

Write down your comments or questions below. Others and I will try to address them as soon as we can.