new to cell technology/terminology

ok so I've enjoyed my z500a for a few months and am now confident enuff to educate myself on some of the things the cells do, but it's all in a strange new language that I'm unfammiliar with.

like what is an "imei" number, and what can I do with it?

what are the typical side effects of: unlocking, debranding, firmware upgrading? does it effect warranty/Quality of service/basic function? positively/neutrally/negatively

since the z500 has no bluetooth/irda and the usb cable sucks, is the serial any good?

if someone could answer/point to a decent doc on the subj. I'd be gratefull

oh and hello all

thx
M

IMEI # is an unique number for your phone more like an ID. So don't do anything with it. Leave it alone.

Unlocking is to unlock the phone which normally is locked to the service provider that supply the phone to you at a discounted price. Before unlock, your phone can only works with SIM cards from the same provider. Please note that unlocking the phone will void the warranty.

Debranding / firmware upgrading is to change the internal firmware of the phone to another firmware such as from another service provider. It is a way to unlock the phone or change the features or Menu of the phone. Drawback is if the firmware is locked to another provider, the phone will end up locking to that provider. Another which I am not so sure is since the firmware may contain some factory tuning parameters to optimize the phone's performance. Changing the firmware may upset some of the settings and may affect the performance of the phone. As for warranty, it certainly will void the warranty if you change the firmware unless it is done by your service provider. They sometimes do that in order to solve some software bugs.

I don't know why you hate the usb cable, I have no problem so far using it. I believe the serial cable work similar to the usb cable except that you don't need to install a driver for it to work.

Hope I answer all your questions!

I dont like the usb cable due to a previous bad experiece, @ the time there was no decent driver support for ma phone, and if I was a typical end user I would have no doubt made a few panicked calls when my shell colapsed.

could a phone be "unlocked" for normal operation and "relocked" for warenty service, Ive caught the 5x max unlock tries bit but is there a limit to relocking? Would doing a "master reset" relock the phone? or would it require special codes/fresh firmware to acomplish this?

Unlocking probably won't solve the problem that you are concerning. I guess you probably are concerning that your phone is locked to certain network which I don't think it is the case. Your phone shouldn't lock to any network when you got it from Fido/Rogers. The Unlocking that I mentioned in my earlier post refer to SIM lock where the phone will only accept any SIM card from the same provider. Lets say you have a Fido phone, you can put in SIM card from your friend if he/she is using Fido but not from Rogers. If you travel a lot to oversea or America and you don't want to pay expensive roaming charges, unlocking make sense as you can put in SIM card from other provider locally like pay as you go.

currently the sim lock section of the service menu says
network: locked
network subset : unlocked
service provider :locked
corporate :unlocked
ESL :unlocked

I'm more interested in the possabilities, one thing I noticed is the firmware doesnt match with what I thought it should be(version r4a014) so I might want to flash, given that the zoom feature doesn't work as advertized but I'm not going to be stupid, if they'll do it under warrenty, I'll let them.

what does:
cldc -1.1
midp 1.0 - 2.0
have bearing on?

If you're gonna have Fido/Rogers flash your firmware for you, just ask them to unlock it as well. Tell them you plan on travelling and want the option of throwing in a T-mobile SIM card or whatever. If they're pricks about it, just buy a terminator dongle on eBay and lock/unlock/flash it all on your own.

I've gotten a few sugestions the unlocking improves signal reception, is there any truth to this?

does a firmware flash delete contacts/saved pic/video?

thanks to evry1 for helping me with my q's?

I'm not technically sure how unlocking would improve signal strength, but I guess it might be possible. Maybe when roaming it might help somehow?

For better signal reception you'd be better off upgrading the firmware, as newer firmwares are obviously released to fix bugs and improve phone performance, with such benefits as improved signal reception, increase in bluetooth quality and range, an overall quicker phone, and improved functions and features.

Flashing your phone will indeed delete your contacts and images/ringtones/etc., but that's no problem; just save everything (or as much as you can) to your SIM card first. Flashing is then performed without the SIM installed.

I also get very poor reeption where i live. I am on Vodafone 3G and i cant even retrieve a MMS from a friend right this minute. I dont think its the phone itself. Its just the network provider.

Just a quick question..

Does the USB cable COME with the Z500?
Or do you have to buy it on the side?

new to cell technology/terminology

Similar Topics

New Sony Ericsson Cell Phones

Subscribe to Our Feed

Carriers Talk

Manufacturers Talk

Mobiledia Community