Help, please! My super pre-release Z30 is stuck in 2014 :(
So, a couple months ago, I got the opportunity to purchase a rare, unreleased Z30: a prototype STA100-1, the model that AT&T would have released had they released one. It’s etched with ‹ Not For Sale › on the front, and the battery says X00 instead of Z30. Safe to say, it’s an oddity.
Once I bought the device, I was informed by the seller, who I believe worked at BlackBerry (or maybe just had friends there) and has far, far more professional tech experience under his belt than I, that there was a bit of a catch. Long story short, the phone is stuck all the way back on release 10.2.1.2977. When he had tried to upgrade the phone to the official 10.3.x, there were apparently some major incompatibilities, manifesting in the phone dropping signal every couple of seconds. I’m not quite sure whether it actually ever attained signal or not, as we didn’t speak on the phone very long about the issue, but whatever it was, it seemed cyclical every few seconds, and made the phone unusable practically.
Then here’s my dilemma: Using 10.2.1 in 2016 sucks, big time. So many features were added between then and now that make my Passport SE a better phone in terms of software. Little things you take for granted like the ability to use two fingers to swipe down quick setting from in an app, and big things like the virtual assistant, which I used to use daily on my SE. And, more than this, app incompatibility is becoming HUGE. Teamviewer and Helium, both of which I NEED for work, don’t run on anything under 10.3.x.
Given the no-going-back that is updating to 10.3.2.680 or later versions, I’m left with the horrendous decision to use my fabulous Z30 forever stuck in 2014, or risk bricking it but possibly giving new life with an update to 10.3.2.
Here’s where you lot come in. I feel pretty comfortable saying that the official OS releases would brick my phone in the way the seller described; there's simply no way he wouldn't have been able to figure out how to do that yet amateur techy me could. But, I’m hoping that someone out there thinks they might know a way of using a hybrid OS to make the cellular radio not fritz out every couple of seconds. I’ve been searching the boards for a couple hours and it seems like this is a pretty regular thing, to create sort of Frankenstein OSes with different firmware from different releases from different devices.
So, without further ado, the question: is anyone familiar enough with the STA100-1 to confidently say that any certain such hybrid OS might bring my Z30 up-to-date, whilst also solving the radio malfunction that the seller encountered? It’s becoming more and more clear with each passing day that it’s not worth the added bands and frequencies of owning the STA100-1 when it means using them on a painfully dated OS release.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer!