Verizon releases new Tour firmware, lets mayhem briefly reign before pulling

We know from discussions with tipsters (and from the simple fact that rumored phones take a century to get released) that Verizon tests the crap out of things -- generally speaking, anyway. Apparently that wasn't the case with the latest Tour firmware to see action, though, because 4.7.1.53 got pulled within a few hours of its release -- but not before wreaking havoc with at least a few users' phones, some to the point where Verizon went ahead and recommended a replacement unit. When you consider that BlackBerrys are probably among the most mission-critical devices in any carrier's lineup, this is a big deal; Verizon did the right thing by moving swiftly to pull the bunk build, but the question remains: how did such a quickly-detected problem make it through what was very likely an exhaustive internal testing phase?

[webmastir Posted Sep 21st 2009 8:37AM]

weird. i updated & it's seemed to have helped my phone rather than hinder it in any way. *shrug*

[MRCUR Posted Sep 21st 2009 8:39AM]

It's very possible VZW didn't have any test phones get "bricked." The beta for this OS was released a day or two before the "official" release and I didn't see any reports of this "bricking."

Now of course it's pretty easy to fix a bricked BB, but probably not to the average user.

[CeluGeek Posted Sep 21st 2009 11:11AM]

VZW has been pushing BlackBerrys very hard to compete with the iPhone. I have yet to see a VZW commercial for the Touch Pro 2 or the Ozone. Therefore, I'm not surprised if they have soften their uber-tight testing phases to get BlackBerry stuff released quicker so they can prevent more customers leaving for the iPhone.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2009 6:17PM]

So what was the problem? I'm also seeing a performance gain with the update as well. :l