Contest winners: Bold 9900 accessory, MetroUI theme, and Crazy Colors theme!

Here are the winners from last week's round of contests. If you won you will be receiving an email either from us or directly from the retailer/developer in the next few days. If for some reason you don't receive an email within 7-14 days (be sure to check your spam/junk folder just in case, and verify your registered address associated with your CrackBerry account) you can email us at sitesupport(at)crackberry.com and we'll be sure to get you taken care of. Please be patient as some emails may take longer than others to arrive. Congrats to all the winners!

AT&T BlackBerry Bold 9900 Accessory Roundup

MetroUI theme by Bbt Designs - An evolution of the BlackBerry OS

Win a free copy of Crazy Colors Abstract by BB-Freaks!

A Little Explanation of How LocalBar Works to Locally Install Bar Files

In case you have been playing with LocalBar on your PlayBook all weekend you may be interested in this. Yohan, the developer of LocalBar, posted on his blog offering a bit of insight into how LocalBar works and what it does. In essence he is replicating the sideloading process from a PC by performing it using the PlayBook NDK to load apps from Localhost. This is a hack RIM could probably easily block by blocking sideloading from Localhost but I really hope they DO NOT decide to do that. If anything RIM should be promoting OTA downloads since that is the only way for Beta Testing and even their own Beta Zone concept to work on the PlayBook.

Here is how Yohan describes LocalBar:

More on BerryReview

Telstra Releases OS 7.0.0.474 For BlackBerry Torch 9810

Looks like with all the other carriers dropping official OS7′s this week, Telstra decided to follow suit.  We were just informed that Telstra has released OS 7.0.0.474 for the 9810.  You can find the OS here on Teltra’s BlackBerry softare update page.

More on BerryReview

BlackBerry Bridge v1.0.7.4 Update Change Log

This update came out on Thursday of last week but I just noticed that one of our tipsters sent us a change log for the update. Its nice to see RIM at least has a sort of informal change log for the update which is why I even bother mentioning it. The really odd part is that a BlackBerry PlayBook OS update has not come out with the update to the Bridge like it usually does…

Here is the change log for BlackBerry Bridge 1.0.7.4:

Still sadly does not have a fix for Bridge on OS 2.0 beta… In case you don’t already have it you can find the updated BlackBerry Bridge in App World here

More on BerryReview

LocalBar App Installs BAR Files Directly from your BlackBerry PlayBook

 

We are getting one step closer to being able to easily install PlayBook applications OTA just like current BlackBerry smartphone apps. Until now RIM has forced us to load apps only through App World or by using a convoluted sideloading method which requires a PC and quite a few steps. Now Yohan aka TinyHack has managed to bypass quite a few of those steps. He has released a small program called LocalBar that lets you sideload any BAR file for an application onto your PlayBook directly from your PlayBook. The only downside is that you need to first sideload the LocalBar application but after that you can use LocalBar to simply install any app from the device storage. That means you can download or transfer BAR files over Wi-Fi and then install them using LocalBar. In other words you get a sort of OTA download in two steps.

Yohan was kind enough to provide some great instructions on how to use LocalBar along with a download link for LocalBar. Check it out at this link or below:

You need to sideload LocalBar using your PC/Mac. There are many guides on the Internet like this one or this one.

Next time when the upgrade of this app is available, you can install the upgrade directly from PlayBook using this app.

You MUST enable development mode before installing the apps (you should have done this step when you sideload LocalBar.

You will need to grant some privileges to this app after first install.

Here is the main screen after you grant the privileges.

Swipe down from the top bezel to show the menu.

Choose “Install”. It will show the list of bar files that you have. It will automatically scan all your documents folder (including downloads folder from the browser).

Select a bar file, a confirmation dialog will appear.

Click OK to confirm. A password dialog will appear. Just ignore the user field. This is the PlayBook standard login dialog, and I haven’t explored yet how to disable the username field. And you need to press the OK button (the “Return” key doesn’t work yet).

After you fill in the password, it will start the installation. If everything is fine, then this dialog should appear.

More on BerryReview

Verizon BlackBerry Curve 9370 World Phone Launching Nov 17th?

A new leaked roadmap points to Verizon releasing the BlackBerry Curve 9370 on November 17th. We previously saw this device in a Verizon rebate form and now we actually have a rumored launch date. The Curve 9370 differs from the 9350/9360 models by having 1GB of storage instead of the 9350/9360’s 512MB of storage. The 9370 is also a world phone which is a first for the Curve packing a Dual-Band: 800/1900 MHz CDMA/EVDO Rev A antenna with a Quad-Band: 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE antenna.

Who knows if Verizon will follow through on this November 17th but I am thinking this could be a big device for them. They do really well with these low end devices when companies are equipping fleets of their employees with new practical devices. via DroidLife via CrackBerry

More on BerryReview

Official OS 7.0.0.474 For The BlackBerry Torch 9810 From Telstra

Software For BlackBerry® Torch™ 9810 smartphone

BlackBerry Handheld Software v7.0.0.2090 (Asia)

Package Version: 7.0.0.2090

Consisting of:

Note: The Software Platform and Applications version numbers can be found under Options-About screen on the handheld.

Download:

How To:

Please report any feedback/findings in the comments or in the forums.

REMEMBER: It is recommended that you make a backup before attempting to upgrade your BlackBerry just in case something goes wrong during the upgrade process. *