[cadman33619]

I'd like to buy a red pearl for my wife... we have T-Mo service. What do I need to do? Do I need to go into a Cingular store and ask for an unlocked red pearl? She has the razr now... would I just swap the sim cards? or do I need to call T-mo to activate it? Thanks all

[tgray]

I'm not sure if you can walk into a Cingular store and request an unlocked phone. If they were able to comply, you would probably end up paying out the wazoo for it.

You could check with Tmobile to see if they will be releasing another Pearl option later on this year (rumors are there's another suretype device coming out before then). You could just buy the device and use one of the online services to get the device unlocked too.

Check ebay.

[John Clark]

If you can buy one from Cingular they will charge you $400-$500. There are some available on eBay. Try to stick with New in box as a used BB can sometimes be more of a pain than it's worth for the little you save (learned this myself.) Some on eBay are already unlocked however, if not once you get the BB, you'll need to contact someone like GSMPhoneSource.com and pay to get the phone unlocked. If you have any friends with Cingular it's possible they could get it unlocked through Cingular for you but probably will be necessary to pay to unlock it.

Once unlocked you should be able to slip the sim card from your wife's phone into the red Pearl and be good to go. With no BB data plan you will get "data connection refused" message. Either add the data plan or go to Options >Network >Data Services "off."


What I did was purchase a White TMo pearl for my wife that way I could just call and have TMo unlock it for free (she uses another carrier that doesn't offer BB's.)