More Issues Facing BlackBerry Tour, RIM Yanks Firmware Update

Last week, the BlackBerry Tour faced some public scrutiny due to its trackball. Beyond that, RIM officially approved new firmware for the Tour...and then yanked the update after it caused even more problems for end users.The Tour's first few weeks of life in the smartphone market aren't going so well. An analyst recently noted that the device was seeing high return rates due to faulty trackballs. Both Sprint and Verizon Wireless have publicly reassured customers that there were indeed some hardware-related issues at first, but they have been fixed.

This morning's reports that suggest RIM approved and then pulled a firmware update for the Tour are troubling, to say the least.

RIM gave the thumbs up to system build 4.7.1.53 for the Tour and made it available to end users via BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Apparently, the update was pulled within a few hours. According to forum posts, end users were seeing major errors during the update process.

CrackBerry.com forum poster lastraid reported, "Just to let you all know. I just attemped the update and it fatal errored on me. Phone is fried. This happened a step 7 of 11, so I am back to my curve for the moment. I was infomed that this does not happen to all devices. Called VZW tech and asked to xfered to RIM. They have informed me that if this happens, the device must be replaced. All known fixes do not work."

That's not good. There's been no official word from RIM about the firmware build.

Beyond all that, GigaOM's Om Malik posted an article this morning that lambastes the Tour and outlines more issues than just the trackball. Malik writes, "The Tour has turned out to be quite a lemon. The trackball is behaving like a 300-pound man running up a hill. Tour hangs when I am trying to send text messages or check MLB scores. There is a strange clicking sound that accompanies phone calls; furthermore, folks are complaining of a strange whooshing noise when I call them. And if all that weren't enough - Tour's battery dries up faster than raindrops in the Sahara."

Ouch. Malik says that he had gone so far as to recommend the Tour to a number of friends when he first switched to the device. He now wishes he had kept his mouth shut, as they are experiencing problems with their Tours, too.

RIM, what's going on here?