T-Mobile Blackberry Curve 8320 O/S Upgrade Rocks!

I have been anxiously waiting for T-Mobile to release the 4.5 upgrade for my Blackberry Curve (aka 8320) since Blackberry first announced the upgrade early this year. Apparently T-Mobile takes their time to QA O/S releases, because it took about 9 months for them to finally get this one out on the web site. They finally did release the upgrade on October 20th, and it was well worth the wait. (you can download the upgrade free at http://www.t-mobile.com/bbupgrade/ - T-Mobile customers only).

Key features of this upgrade include:

• Support for MicroSD cards up to 16GB (4GB was the previous max);
• Full stereo Bluetooth support
• YouTube now works with the Web browser (although it still doesn't seem to be fully Flash compatible)
  
• Video recording
• HTML email rendering (huge one for me--no more knarly HTML-laden email messages to wade through)
• Improved WMA support (this allows calling over WiFi)
• Limited email attachment editing (MS Word, for example) via a free version of Documents to Go
• Other miscellaneous stability enhancements

The upgrade process was pretty straightforward, although be sure to allocate a couple of hours! At times I thought that the process had stalled, but I left it alone for fear of "bricking" my Curve. My patience was rewarded (eventually) with a fully functional, upgraded phone. The only main "nit" that I have with the upgrade process (other than the excruciatingly long wait) was that it broke my BES connection, requiring the deletion and re-creation of my BES account by our I/T personnel. Other than that, no problems.

I've been using the upgraded O/S for about a day now, and other than a couple of weird "uncaught exception" errors when updating the "My Faves" list (which isn't a huge deal), it's been rock stable. True to their promise, UMA seems to be more stable, and the other features seem to work well. I am particularly happy with the HTML email viewing option and the ability to edit attachments.

Overall, I'm really pleased. The free upgrade turned my Curve from a so-so multimedia phone into a bit of a powerhouse. It still lacks 3G, of course, but on WiFi it really screams. Add to that the benefits of using UMA (gives me flawless coverage at my home, which usually is horrible), and I'm very pleased with the Curve, T-Mobile, and the new upgrade.