I guess it was bound to happen :-(

[Mann Incognito]

I know at times I can come across as a bit of a fanboy when it comes to BlackBerry but in all honesty I've had nothing but good luck with their product. I find the hardware solidly built and the OS, in 7.1 guise at least, to provide everything I need with an almost guarenteed level of security, reliability and speed.

That was until yesterday morning.

It started when I decided to load a couple of CDs I had ripped the day before. Everything seemed to go well with the process. once they were loaded I shut down BBDS and properly disconnected my phone. I know it can take a moment for the phone to properly sort itself out so I wasn't surprised to see only one song display and the green bar at the bottom showing it was still sorting things out. In the meantime I received a call that lasted for about ten minutes. After the call was done I noticed the phone was very hot to the touch, in fact the heat caused me some concern. I left the phone for about fifteen minutes while I made a coffee and caught up on the news. I came back and it was still as hot as when I left it, it was at this time I noticed that the battery was down to about 50% after being left fully charged and switched off over night.

Still the phone wouldn't cool so I removed the battery and left it for about fifteen minutes, only putting it back in when it was completely cooled. Now the battery was showing about 25% power.

Things got even stranger when I checked to see if the songs had downloaded OK. The song count showed about 1,100 songs, about where I expected it to be but when I went to check the albums, there were no songs! This was true for all folders, playlists and albums, not one single track was showing. The odd thing was, all the tracks were showing in the individual Songs folder. Plus none of the songs would play.

Now the battery was in the red zone and I charged it. At first it wouldn't take a charge but after a couple of hours it was showing some improvement and I was able to get it fully charged about six hours later.

Things seemed to settle down after that and I continued with what was left of the day. Later I tried to play some of the tracks I had downloaded earlier only to notice that they wouldn't play through the speaker, only through a headset. After figuring this out the same thing happened with the songs; they completely disappeared from their respective folders. I gave up trying to figure out what was going on and powered the phone down and went to bed. it was pretty close to fully charged when I switched it off as I hadn't used it much save for trying to fix it. This morning when I got up the phone wouldn't power up at all! No matter what I tried it wouldn't switch on. I tried battery and SIM card pulls and pushing every button I could until I gave up. For some reason I tried plugging the phone in and after about 10 minutes it went into its boot cycle. I was most surprised to find the battery indicator to be glowing bright red and flashing after leaving the phone off over night at about 90% full.

I would be inclined to say this is just a battery issue but there's much more going on than just that and I'm extremely disappointed and concerned. I have no idea what to do next save for returning the phone. Any ideas?

I should add this is a 6(?) month old 9790 running 7.1

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[DennyCrane]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry Bold 9900: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9900; en) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.391 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Oh man, that's brutal. I'd definitely take it back while it's still under warranty.

[Mann Incognito]

I chatted to RIM this morning as the problem was getting worse by the minute, they suggested a battery swap which my carrier, WIND, agreed with. That lasted a grand total of about 10 minutes before the new fully charged battery had completely drained and the phone was burning hot again. Went straight back to WIND who exchanged the phone and so far so good! Just got home now so I'm running the back up to the new device as I type this.

*EDIT*

This unit's as bad as the last one. It got so hot that I had to shut it down an hour ago and it's still as hot now.

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[ArjunG]

You should try updating the software, could be old. Also when you say it was playing through the headset, did you try pushing the $ sign key, that switches between speaker and headset, that might be the issue you are experiencing. Also the no songs in the albums things happens when the phone hasn't fully loaded this music correctly. Perhaps new software will be better/faster and this, as I have noticed first hand that newer OSes can often initialize all the music faster.

[Mann Incognito]

I have had 3 exchange units and a new battery today and it doesn't solve any of the issues. The current unit I have I haven't run the back up on and it's not only draining as fast as the others but is refusing to take a charge. I've been informed by the WIND store I was at that this is the last unit they have for exchange and I was hoping that by not running the back up I could figure out if it has anything to do with any apps I've loaded.

The staff did tell me this problem is not unheard of with the 9790 but are at a loss as to the cause. The problem is, based on WIND's replacement policy I have to keep exchanging until I find one that works properly, they won't allow a trade to a different phone and I've lost all confidence in this phone now and I feel like I'm stuck with a lemon.

[ArjunG]

Really try updating the software if you can. PM me if you need help. It will allow the phone to operate completely differently, which may stop this overheating problem from happening. If it doesn't fix it, it must be a hardware fault.

[Heavy Fluid]

I would try not loading the music, and just the backup as before. See if that might be the culprit.

[Mann Incognito]

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

What a difference a day makes. I still have the third exchange unit which I was due to exchange yet again later today at a store 30 miles away (the closest store with an exchange unit available). I tinkered around with it all yesterday and somehow and someway it works! When I first got it home it was as bad as the others even before I restored it. I charged it up and it lost the full charge after about 15 minutes and the phone was back to being red hot again. I didnt know what to do so I recharged it but this time left it charging over night.

Yesterday I restored the phone and everything was fine for about an hour when it started to over heat again so I quickly did a factory reset and things settled down again. After that I restored the phone one app and file at a time. I excluded all files in the OS that I would never use, such as various language packs, and once everything seemed stable I reinserted my SD card and so far so good!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed but it's been almost 12 hours without it threatening to blow up on me and so I'm quietly optimistic.

Once again, thanks for all the pointers, hopefully I won't be posting about this subject again.

Special thanks to WIND and RIM for all your efforts in this matter, I was most impressed with the professionalism and genuine concern shown.

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[ArjunG]

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

What a difference a day makes. I still have the third exchange unit which I was due to exchange yet again later today at a store 30 miles away (the closest store with an exchange unit available). I tinkered around with it all yesterday and somehow and someway it works! When I first got it home it was as bad as the others even before I restored it. I charged it up and it lost the full charge after about 15 minutes and the phone was back to being red hot again. I didnt know what to do so I recharged it but this time left it charging over night.

Yesterday I restored the phone and everything was fine for about an hour when it started to over heat again so I quickly did a factory reset and things settled down again. After that I restored the phone one app and file at a time. I excluded all files in the OS that I would never use, such as various language packs, and once everything seemed stable I reinserted my SD card and so far so good!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed but it's been almost 12 hours without it threatening to blow up on me and so I'm quietly optimistic.

Once again, thanks for all the pointers, hopefully I won't be posting about this subject again.

Special thanks to WIND and RIM for all your efforts in this matter, I was most impressed with the professionalism and genuine concern shown.

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Glad to hear your up and running!

[Audi Fan]

I just have to ask though - when you bring your phone into Wind for a replacement, do you keep the battery in the original phone every single time? I'm asking because I had this issue with my 9530 and it turned out it was because the batter would no longer take a charge. I remember the phone would last me about fifteen minutes after a full night's charge. I replaced the battery and everything was okay.

[Rogido]

Would it have something to do with OS 7.1? I thought the 9790 ships with OS 7.0.

My wife has a Telus 9790 company phone, and so far no problem. Mind you, she uses it only like a messenging phone!