Phone upgrades and cracking the Blackberry

Had a most frustrating time tonight trying to crack a Blackberry 8310.

My mobile phone upgrade is due in June and I am trying to work out what my best option will be. Currently I am using an O2 branded HTC Touch Pro running Windows Mobile 6.5. I would really like to get an HTC TOuch Pro 2 as my next upgrade but it doesn't look like O2 will be doing one anytime soon.

I don't really like the other flavours of HTC device that they are currently offering so I am now looking at alternatives. At the moment it will be down to either an iPhone or a Blackberry unless some Android based phone appears that takes my fancy as it looks like I am not going to get a nice phone running Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone as it is soon to be called). My reason for wanting to stick with Windows Mobile is the support for Outlook and categories in the calendar. It transpires that none of the default calendar offerings on iPhone, Blackberry or Android actually support categories so I will need to source alternative calendar software for whatever device I may end up with if I move away from WinMo.

I really don't want to take a new phone without playing with it first so my mission over the next few months is to get hands on.
Sam has an iPhone so I will have an opportunity to play with that before the upgrade.

Step in David Steele who has lent me an old work Blackberry to try out. My first problem was that it was locked to T-Mobile and I am on O2 so I set about downloading and installing various bits of software to try and unlock the device to all networks.

I'll cut a long story short! Four tries and lots of Googling got me there in the end! It was a bit seat of your pants and a couple of times I thought I had bricked the device but all was well in the end and my O2 sim card now works quite happily in the Blackberry 8310. Synchronisation with my Outlook address book and calendar was seemless, so far so good. I've managed to install some cute pink and Hello Kitty themes as well. Might get an O2 Simplicity pay as you go sim card next to test the Blackberry and email functionality.

Tip for anyone looking to crack a device or flash a ROM, make sure you have back ups and plenty of time!