Carrier updates on unlocked, prepaid Priv

Hi everyone,

I am sorry if my questions are somewhat common knowledge... I have not been an avid cell phone user- right now I have a $20 "coolpad" from Walmart- got it because it was the smallest touch screen phone I could find.

My needs in a phone have evolved and it's time to embrace one as something that can help me manage tasks and communications for my business (a bicycle store).

I just purchased a new, unlocked TMobile Priv on eBay.

Will I receive updates through TMobile if I activate it with their prepaid service?

I would like to receive both Android updates, and BB specific updates.

If not, is there a manual way to update the phone?

Thank you for any information, and for all the tips on using the Priv in the forums.

If you buy an AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon Priv, you are on the respective carrier's update schedule: when they push something out, you'll get it. If they don't push anything new, you can't install anything new.

There is a manual, non-over the air (OTA) method of updating and that's called using an autoloader. But there are four types of autoloaders that are not interchangeable: one each for Verizon, AT&T, TMO and every other Priv.

So in your case, with a TMO Priv, you are dependent on TMO to push the update out to you OTA or a TMO autoloader to come around (generally happens around the same time an OTA is made available.)

Prepaid vs. Postpaid doesn't make a difference.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I selected a TMobile Priv over ATT because of their data "freebie" for music streaming.

If I were to use this unlocked phone on ATT, would I void my eligibility for TMobile pushing updates to me, and would ATT then push updates to my phone?

Or would I be stuck in the mud with no update support?

Originally Posted by Elektrobot

Thank you very much for your reply.

I selected a TMobile Priv over ATT because of their data "freebie" for music streaming.

If I were to use this unlocked phone on ATT, would I void my eligibility for TMobile pushing updates to me, and would ATT then push updates to my phone?

Or would I be stuck in the mud with no update support?

Welcome to CrackBerry!

You can use this phone with any GSM carrier you want. But if you want to get OTA updates for this TMO Priv, make sure you have a TMO SIM card. For TMO, I believe it doesn't matter if the SIM is activated, active, unfunded, or dead. So if you happen to find out from CrackBerry or some other place that TMO has put out an update for the Priv, that would be your cue to pop in that TMO SIM and check for an OTA update.

Wonderful information to know,

Thank you

Originally Posted by Elektrobot

Wonderful information to know,

Thank you

You're welcome. For what it's worth, while both TMO and AT&T are bad when it comes to pushing out updates to the Priv, TMO is slightly better than AT&T. So in my opinion, you picked the better of the two carrier options :)

Now if you were to compare this to the factory unlocked phones ShopBlackBerry sells, the update cycle difference is night and day. On unlocked phones, BlackBerry directly pushes updates to you; they are not bound to a carrier's schedule and whims.