The 8220 is garbage
 

This is from another thread I posted to on Crackberry; I think all BB users should see this. Just fyi, my phone is: unlocked, with a 16gb card, about 10 apps installed, wifi connected almost all the time, Truphone used nearly every day. My GF's phone is pretty much stock out of the box. Both are running 4.6.0.180
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I would rate the phone (the ones I've come in contact with) as : Useless garbage.

My girlfriend and I both upgraded to 8220s on T-mobile back in June. At first, they seemed to be great. Wifi worked, the blackberry OS and interface is great, the compactness is cool.

But then, after about 3 weeks, the dreaded rebooting started. First it was my phone, then about 2 weeks later it started on hers. It would happen randomly. I could figure out no system for how/why it was doing it. Sometimes it was while trying to send an MMS. Sometimes it happened while I was on the phone. And other other times it would do it just while the phone was sitting on my coffee table. Very annoying. A full reboot every time with the security verification, etc.

Then, about 2 months ago the phones started just turning off. I would pull it out of my pocket, and it would be all black. I would look at it sitting on the coffee table and it was all black. And worst of all (I use my phone for an alarm, as most of us do) it would turn off in the middle of the night on my night stand and the alarm would not go off. On Friday BOTH of our unplugged-in, fully charged flips randomly turned off and we missed a 6:15am flight to mexico. It was unbelievably horrible luck, all thanks to the 8220.

With these turnoffs, you couldn't turn it back on with the power button; you had to pull the battery out, and then turn it on. Full reboot with all the bells and whistles. And then, you have no idea when it will turn off again. It could be 5 minutes, it could be 5 days. It's happening at least once every week now.

So, in short, the 8220 started out great, but then slowly turned into a useless, unreliable piece of junk; a piece of junk that became a costly liability. And, it happened to two phones at once, in the same house!

T-mobile is sending new phones, but I doubt it will solve anything (they refuse to send any other BB as a replacement). One of my buddies has the 8220 (he bought his in August), and the thing does the restarting baloney. Additionally, the t-mobile rep I talked to said that it was a widespread and known problem, and because of it, they don't offer the 8220 as an upgrade phone anymore, just as a first-time-contract-buyer phone. Wonderful; pawn off your garbage on new customers. Needless to say, numerous rabid emails have been sent to RIM and T-Mobile for putting me through this.

Maybe there was/is a bad batch of them out there and my girlfriend and I just got 2 of the bad 8220s, but whatever the cause, the engineering of the thing is obviously prone to being unreliable, and I would recommend that people looking for a blackberry go for something else. It's unbelievably dishonest and borderline criminal that RIM and T-Mobile sell these chinese-knockoff-quality, flat-out-garbage phones.

Wow.

Glad that the 8220s we have at home (I *think* my wife and daughter would have mentioned these things to me) and at work don't exhibit these same problems.

Obviously EVERY 8220 EVER BUILT IS BAD. Time for a Class Action Lawsuit?

Nice rant (and first post).

Granted, it's not a great phone but you're seriously going to blame the phone for missing a flight?

FYI, not made in China. Try Mexico.

Shame to hear about your problems. I've had mine a year now, and it is playing up more and more. My problem is that I can't turn it off sometimes, it locks up whilst shutting down. Then it won't turn back on unless I pull the battery, or leave it on the side when it will reboot and turn on itself after an unknown time. I have the latest firmware, and have pulled the media card - but like you I just want a reliable phone!

Have had mine for a little over nine months...8gb memory card, and I run between 10-15 differnt apps...and have never had a freezing/reboot problem.

Let us know if the replacements solve the issue...sorry to hear the originals aren't working out well for you.

WOW. You're saying that people looking for blackberry's in general, not just the 8220 should go for something else?

some people have had problems with phones, have had replacements and they're working fine.

Chinese knockoff quality? i think that would be a 'blockberry' :)

But don't you know that if flapjack30 has a problem, everyone else must have a problem too? Typical first post rant.

ahhh he's just copy pasting what he wrote in the CB forums :)

secondly, how's that 9700 working out for ya?

Love it. Very happy with it. The two complaints I have at the moment are:

1. I make my own today plus themes, and making one for the 9700 turned out to be a disaster. Horrible quality, so it's going to take a bit more effort to make one that works like I had it on the 9000. And yeah, I'm using the new theme builder that supports the 9700.

2. The trackpad, while a great idea, is taking some getting used to. I might need to tweak the sensitivity a bit. But, I like the idea, so I'm being patient while I get comfortable with it.

Other than that, it has been a great device. The AT&T released OS (5.0.0.296) is working well, and I haven't experienced any of the issues others are reporting (SMS missing names, programs not working properly, etc.)

Ok this is serious OT hehehe. think we should move this to the 9700 forum ;)