[acoolstack]

Basically I wanna try to reprogram a bold 9000's radio to try and get it to run on tmo 3G network. I have a spare bold and I want to see if it can be done. This would def be super cool and prolly can make some money from it, pls no negative responses, we don't need that in here only helpful opinions....thx

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[mooda]

hmm would be nice if it could be done through firmware support but i think its more of a hardware thing rim puts in the radio that is set to receive certian wavelength that are broadcast.

[pltaylor]

I wouldn't think there would be much demand for it now that the 9700 is available. Like mooda said, It's my understanding it hardware and therefore not possible. But you never know. The escreen is where you would need to be, but it's been looked at pretty close when it was discovered you could enable UMA there.

Good luck.

[afropoika]

You need the BlackBerry in Service Mode first, low-level utilities from RIM and much patience as well as skill. To my understanding the radio on any BlackBerry made after (but including) the Bold 9000 are reprogrammable.

[Radius]

Can't be done. The radios run at a set frequency and there's no way to change that.

On top of that, the surrounding hardware probably doesn't support the throughput needed for a different speed of connection as data is clocked into these parts at a set rate.

[afropoika]

Can't be done. The radios run at a set frequency and there's no way to change that.

On top of that, the surrounding hardware probably doesn't support the throughput needed for a different speed of connection as data is clocked into these parts at a set rate.

Untrue. For instance, the Japanese Bold 9000 operates at an additional 800Mhz frequency for UMTS (3G). This frequency is not present on the American / European Bold 9000 (as far as I know). However if you made a tear down of each, you will notice no difference in the hardware. The only difference is a re-programmed radio.

If you recall the Bold 9000 in Japan had overheating problems (and it was confirmed not to be related to the battery): RIM: Battery not source of BlackBerry Bold overheating | ITworld. The issue was with a poorly optimized programming of the radio due to the additional UMTS frequency for operation in the DoCoMo 3G network.

BlackBerry in Service Mode and low-level access to the ROM as well as other parts of the device allow for programming the radio to use different bands. In theory it is possible to make it support the 1700Mhz frequency band, but in practice not, because like you mentioned the surrounding hardware was not initially designed for it (this caused the overheating issues with the Japanese model in the first place, RIM had to rewrite the radio programming once more to optimize the procedure for selecting the UMTS band).