[v23nb]

First up I should confess to not being very knowledgeable with mobiles and networks so please go easy on me. I have tried a search but came up with nowt.

I have been with Virgin Mobile for many years taking advantage of their Liberty Sim deal of XXX mins + XXX texts for £XX per month. A friend of mine who used to work for RIM gave me an unlocked Curve 8300 a couple of years ago however when I tried to work out how to get it hooked up for data I found that Virgin Mobile didn't support the Blackberry Internet Service so ever since I have just had a mobile that makes calls and has a full keyboard for texting and not much else. Recently I have swapped to a new Liberty sim tariff that gives me unlimited data so in a burst of excitement I bought a Nokia E63 as I knew that was supported by Virgin. I had the phone for 10 days but absolutely hated the Symbian OS and never once succeeded in getting it to do anything I wanted it to do. I have taken up Virgins offer of getting a full refund so am now revisiting my 8300 and wondering if there is a way of getting it to work with email, internet, maps, etc through manual configuration perhaps. Can anyone help?

[geniusworkin]

The only way to get this particular phone to work is to take a contract with one of the big four telecoms providers.

1. Take out a contract, depending on your budget either take a sim only deal or go for one with an included phone. (You can sell the phone at a later stage)

2. Call Customer Services, get them to add Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) to your account. Before you hang up, ask them for the BIS website.

3. Log on to the site, (should be something like mobileemail.vodafone.com or relevant to your network). Once on create an account with your choice or username and password.

4. Once into your personal area, select 'Register Device' or 'Switch Device'. You'll need your phone settings for this part. All the details are located on your phone here: Options -> Status. Enter the PIN and IMEI into the relevant section online.

5. Finally Send Service Books, and it should start working.

Send a few test emails, once you're done send me a PM and I'll you my PIN and I'll introduce you to Blackberry Messenger.

gw

[v23nb]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. I suspected it might be impossible if the network didn't support BIS. Oh well.

[geniusworkin]

Not a problem, always willing to help a fellow Blackberry user.

Most networks should now have BIS functionality, surprising that Virgin don't yet.

Well good luck,

gw

[Hamiltonian]

Hi genius
just read your reply to v23nb - are you saying that a blackberry on virgin cannot have _any_ email access, i.e. that even web based email services that support POP or IMAP are not accessible (i.e. the 'virgin' blackberry doesn't support a pull email service).
I'd been considering getting a 2nd hand blackberry with the intention of getting existing web email on it (fastmail, fwiw), which i can do quite happily, if a little clunkily, on my aging Palm TX.

any suggestions gratefully appreciated.
h

[geniusworkin]

Originally Posted by Hamiltonian

Hi genius
just read your reply to v23nb - are you saying that a blackberry on virgin cannot have _any_ email access, i.e. that even web based email services that support POP or IMAP are not accessible (i.e. the 'virgin' blackberry doesn't support a pull email service).
I'd been considering getting a 2nd hand blackberry with the intention of getting existing web email on it (fastmail, fwiw), which i can do quite happily, if a little clunkily, on my aging Palm TX.

any suggestions gratefully appreciated.
h

well its seems as though Virgin don't support any PUSH email either via BIS or BES.

theoretically as long as you have a GPRS data connection you should be able to 'pull' any kind of email off a server, ensuring all the usual security, VPN stuff if applicable.

If you do decide to go for it, download the gmail app. Does half the 'pulling' action for you. You can have it access your other mailboxes and retrieve the mail and display in a gmail account. Nifty little app.

gw

[teknosys]

Originally Posted by geniusworkin

well its seems as though Virgin don't support any PUSH email either via BIS or BES.

theoretically as long as you have a GPRS data connection you should be able to 'pull' any kind of email off a server, ensuring all the usual security, VPN stuff if applicable.

If you do decide to go for it, download the gmail app. Does half the 'pulling' action for you. You can have it access your other mailboxes and retrieve the mail and display in a gmail account. Nifty little app.

gw

Do Orange support BIS and PUSH email? as I hope so, as currently trying to go over from T Mobile PAYG to Orange PAYG ( long story regards retaining my number) and they said I just had to pay £5 for data BUT is this full BB service