Buying a secondhand BB phone.

So, after you have read my review your still willing to buy a BB phone but, don't have enough money to buy a new one of the shelf so, you decide to look for alternate ways. That's when you decide to buy a second hand BlackBerry phone. Here are a few tips that you need to keep in mind before you buy one and later realize that its a stolen device.

Before I get there, here are a few things you should know by now: Most Network Operators sell BB phones under different plans in most cases in the US, India and UK these phones are sold by Vodafone and T-Mobile in the US, under such plans. The phone PIN# is locked by the service provider. Its next to impossible to have these codes unlocked by the service provider if they are stolen. This is how it works, the first owner's details like his/her name & full address, day of the service being activated the plan type activated, along with a complain details, if the device has been stolen.

Not that they are many way to find out if your device is a stolen one or not, just be smart than be sorry. Read on:

1. Before you decide to purchase a BB secondhand phone, please ensure you go meet the seller of the device check the phone, if the seller offers it for 1/3rd the price you sure know something would be wrong in the phone don't make any mistake of paying him the money and buying the phone. Inquire why he/she is selling the phone. Ask them do they have their BIS service active on the device, why? read the next point.

2. Very often you notice people who sell stolen phone happen to remove the sim card and say they have recently de-activated their BIS services on the phone, they switch on the phone show you all the basic feature but fail to show you if the mail service or the BBM is active or not. B4 u decide to buy on try this smart move, check with your friends who have BB phone and who have BBM service actived on their device, request them to come along with you while you check out the device that is on offer. In such cases you can use your friends sim card on the device that is on offer to check if the BBM service works or not. Your friend who already owns a BB will help you activate the service on that device before you decide to buy it off. If your friend agrees to swtich sim with the other phone that's going to save a lot of time and energy.

One another thing you can notice is if the phone happens to be a stolen on after you have inserted the sim with active BIS you have to follow these steps to activate BIS service on BB device by going to Menu >> settings >> Advanced Settings >> Host Routing Table which you click on it you'll notice this *No Entries* click on the menu button and your have a drop box with the first option being REGISTER NOW click on the register now and wait for the message to be sent within 10mins after sending the register now message you'll get the setting on the phone and a message from the service provider stating that the

BLACKBERRY SERVICE IS ACTIVE ON YOUR PHONE. What you then have to do is to do a hard reset by opening the back batter compartment and pull out the battery while the phone is working and insert the batter back. Wait for the device to start up it will take about 5mins.

Once the device is switched on on the top of the extreme side of the screen you'll notice the Reception Bar and the word edge followed by the reception signal bars. If the word is all inupper case like this EDGE then your device is ready for using BIS service and BBM after you have called the customer service provider to help you create an BB account you will get a unique email address and a password to use the services. In case inspite of getting an message the word is still in lower case like this edge then then device is a stolen device.

In case you have no known close friends with BB phone and service activated the smartest move to make then is to ask the seller to come to the nearest vodafone outlet and have the deviced checked by the sale people with an active SIM card. If the phone fails activate the BIS service i.e, when I say BIS service here I mean when ever you activate your BIS service through your network operator will create an email account and a password so you can activate your email service and add upto 10 email accounts and work on BBM. I have added a few pictures, which aren't the best of clarity but, you see my email address on the bottom of the picture. And my active friends on BBM in the second picture.

Guys, incase you end up buying a device which is working with the owners sim card but isn't working with your sim it, simply means the BB PIN# is still locked to the network provider, in that case all you need to do is have the first owner and the true owner to write a letter confirming him selling the phone to you along with his billing address and your billing address and have an email sent to the service provider with whom the device is locked to, the process takes 15day to a month in some cases before they free the PIN# so that you can use it on any service provider.

I hope this has helped, there's no other way to find out if a BB device has been stolen or not, so buyers play smart and don't get cheated. And please if you lose your device ensure you remember your IMEI # so you can provide it to your service provider and the cops so they can track the device if its switched on again.

All about BB8520

I have been a BB8520 user for the last 4months and I must say that I feel like I'm paying a very high price for all the mistakes I've made in my previous life, that's how bad this phone is. Though I must say there's a prettier face to this review of the Blackberry 8520. I have used various phones over the years from Nokia E61i (runs on Symbian 60 V3) to Samsung i780 (Windows Mobile 6.1 professional) and now to a Blackberry that runs OS 4.5.

In these past few years I have enjoyed all the phones until I got the BB 8520, I guess like many of you out there I got carried away by seeing those men in their blacksuits and their shiny blackberry in their hands and doing what they do best BBMing their peers, friends, boy friends, girl friends, mom's, dad's and I always wondered looking at the dedication they showed while messaging and thought to myself Wow! This is one phone I need to have. Perhaps something not many BB owner will tell you is that the phone does nothing more than emailing and BBM chatting and the fact that you will in due course become a "CrackBerry" a most commonly used word to describe men and women who are so glued to their BB phone messaging and sending email that it becomes a part of their identity. Next time you look around the supermarket or a restaurant and find a person yelling at somebody else and there's no emotion cuz he/she is busy doing something on their BB, you probably stop have a good look at him/her and decide whether you want to be like them!

Jokes apart, now I'll try to walk you through the features of this phone and to whom this phone would be best suited for. Before I start I will be doing a comparison of the BB OS/Phone with other phones like a Nokia and Samsung that run on Symbian and Windows Mobile, and few other BB phones, this will help you guys make better decision before you purchase one.

Now, the not so quite old Blackberry 8520 runs on on OS 4.5 developed by BB themselves, the phone seems to be a good one to look at when you compare it with most other business phones in that price range or in terms of the form factor. Considering that the 8520 is a basic edition of BB business phones and offers some nice shortcut keys for playing your music there's nothing much that the phone offers. But, they are a few things one should consider before they go ahead to pick a BB phone, these are a few pre-requisites that has to be looked into before you head to the nearest store:

1. Which phone are you/were you using before?

2. What's your requirement?

3. Will you be using this phone only for call or a complete business management box like messaging, sms', chatting, surfing the net, music and downloading the coolest applications and use some word documents for sending some information.

4. Is this phone going to be a phone for pure pleasure cuz you like it?

Considering I have asked all the relevant questions, now! I shall go ahead and mention the answers for each of the question and probably by the end of this Q&A session you can decide if this phone is something you want to buy.

1. Most people who use or have been using BB switch back to BB for all the obvious reasons. Now, considering that your not so obvious person who goes for such phone, considering that you last phone has been a Nokia, Sony Ericsson or perhaps a WMobile phone or the quite recent iPhone and Android you probably by now know most of the names I have mentioned about all these phone offer something more than just regular phone devices whether its new sleek looks, rich or sound or multimedia the most common this is all these phone lets you download applications from the web and offers you the option of storing the application on your Micro-SD Card and later these can be either installed on your phone or your SD-card itself. The reason I'm specifying this over a few times is because 100% when I say this it mean all BlackBerry Phones do not offer you any option of storing applications on to your so called Micro-SD card, having said that the only way you can make good use of a Micrso SD card in a BB phone is to store your favorite music and last but not the least few office documents and notes. Nothing beyond it.

That's the first flaw I've noticed in BB phone, though many of you may disagree claiming that the BB Bold/9000 and quite so recent BB Storm, Storm 2 and Torch offers incredible on board memory capacity ranging from 1GB to 8GB and also have have improved their OS to Ver6 I must remind you, that both phones BB Bold/9000 and the BB Storm, Storm 2 and the Torch2 though they are equipped with bigger memory boxes they really don't work that well.

I'll leave it here while I get back to answering the remaining 4 questions before I give you all the final conclusion.

2. They are two cases for the answer to this question: These two cases covers question 2 & 3, don't just buy it wait for the conclusion. Patients please!!

Case#1:

When I say what's your requirement I mean what would you be using this phone for is it a pure pleasure that you will buy this phone for and use it only for your SMS' and Calling? If your looking for a phone that meets the specification of a business phone but doesn't do anything more than just sending SMS and calling and probably chatting with friends just because you have a really large # of friends both of whom are from the same place, state or different countries and you need to be in touch with them and damn you love to gossip about it and need some entertainment. Damn with this specification mentioned you sure need to be an Actor from Hollywood/Bollywood or a Fashion Designer, ok if your feel you fit in two of these categories a BB8520 is your best friend.

Case#2:

If your the more serious type who prefer to have phone cuz your a genuine work-a-holic

one of those you see everyday working your ass really late after everybody's left for work and in most cases love to carry your work home and would expect a phone to necessitate you with some great option like saving word documents, have a good pdf reader, have outlook email sync and be your best friend at the airport while your in the Wifi area to finish your work then in this case the BB8520 isn't the phone for you the BB9000/Storm/Storm2 and torch is the phone for you, that's in case you don't want to impress your boss with some cool applications to impress your boss to get you that most deserved and anticipated promotion, Ok did I say cool application to download to impress your boss at work? Ok if I did all the list of phones I mentioned earlier can't do the job. The best bet in that case is a WM phone, Android, Symbian phone or just an iPhone.

4. Ok! If you have decided to buy this phone just cuz you like it for its look and just cuz your neighbor has it or just in case you wanna have a branded phone like BB for the heck of it.

GO ON BE A CLASSIC FOOL BUY ONE!!

Ok, here's the conclusion: Huh can't believe I'm here already!

Lets not waste anymore time on this. Now a like mentioned in Case1 that BB8520 or for that matter any BB phone is for somebody who have large # of friend within the same place, or different states or across the globe. So, you sure need to be Michelle Obama, an Actor or a Great Fashion Designer or a music artist, or the Queen of England (Oh crap the Queen doesn't have any friend I forgot about it) she hasn't used the type writer since it was gifted to her by late Maha Raja of India.) Not over yet!

In most cases if your one of the 3 people and have so many friend and love to sms them and need a better way to be in-touch with them to know what's happening a BB is your best friend cuz it offers Blackberry Messaging which can be activated using ur BIS services from your operator. The draw back in a BB is that like most other GSM phones out there in the market of them lets your chat with friends using a few intelligent integrated chatting services like IM+, Nimbuzz, Palringo etc.., which run on GRPS service which cost much lesser than what you pay for activating your BIS service on your BB device. Apart from having WiFi you cannot use a BB to work on GPRS like other do. Which may be a advantage or disadvantage (that's based on how you look at it.)

Another point where I left off under Case#2 is the considering that most BB device come with either 256MB or 1GB RAM and most recent devices that come with 4/8GB RAM, in the case of phones that have between 256MB to 1GB RAM space, they have a problem on the number of applications you can install on your device. Once the existing space is eaten up you either have delete the not so useful application to install a better application, and you may also notice that the multi-tasking ability of the phone start deteriorating when compared to what you phone was when you first purchased it, what does that mean to you as a mobile phone user. Most smart phones come with a processor and RAM space like your desktop computer at home, Now each of these phone should both a ROM and RAM (Read Only Memory & Random Access Memory, ROM hold your OS and RAM is used for the working or your phone, if you don't know what ROM and RAM is go back to 6th grade and learn your basics on computers.) like mentioned RAM is used by the phone processor when you run an application and when you try to multi-task on your phone, mean running multiple # of applications at once. In the BB phone this works against the phone, when ever you install an application you will notice that the RAM capacity keeps on depleting, what does this mean in terms of functionality and multi-tasking, you will begin to notice that your phone would take more than the time it used to take earlier to perform one task, at time the phone freezes because of lack of RAM required to complete a task.

Some of you may raise a question of what about If I go ahead with the new BB Torch or Storm2 as its equipped with better RAM space of 2GB or higher, now this process is a continous process irrespective of the phone you purchase as long as you can keep minimum of 512MB RAM free on of the 4GB your phone will work just fine, once the phone is full with applications, you'll notice the Freeze show happening. This is one of Blackberry's biggest flaw as the os doesn't let user to install the application on to their SD Card and worst of all most application have to be purchased, when compared to WMphone and Symbian and Android phone offering free cool applications that can be saved on your SD Card. The last point that I wanted to point out in a BB phone they are horrible when used with WiFi connectivity, if you sit right beside the WiFi router and switch on the Wifi connectivity on your phone you'll still notice that the phone will never catch full signals when compared to any other phone that has 802.11b/g shows full signals, the GPRS is the biggest draw back as well, like mentioned earlier if you decided to disconnect with your BIS Service you cannot use BBM on GPRS as BB device were specifically made so that they work on either Wifi or BIS service where the operators may benefit from.

EOD after you have read the entire review by now you must have know if this phone or any BB phone is worth it or not, I'm not saying you shouldn't buy this device or not but, its more of personal choice if you know what you want out a phone then you'll know which one to get.

Happy shopping!!

Cheers.