Looking to Buy a New BB Pearl Flip 8820--Questions

[drw6895]

I am looking to buy a Blackberry Pearl Flip phone to use with Cincinnati Bell Wireless service (has a SIM card), to replace a Samsung phone that I have numerous problems with. I am looking at new unlocked BB Pearl Flip 8220 on Ebay & TimTechs, etc. These appear to be T-Mobile branded phones. Are there any major problems with the 8220 model? Are there any problems with the Bluetooth? I use a Jawbone ICON for long periods of time.

Additionally, I do not want to add the data plan to this Blackberry, since I have a BB Curve that has full data service. Can you set the Wifi on the BB Pearl so that is not always searching for service (to preserve battery life)?

Thanks,

DRW

[Tiassa]

My understanding (from the Pearl 3G discussion) is that CBW and T-mo use the same frequencies, so that an unlocked T-mo phone will work on CBW.

These phones have a known "issue" with BT in that for some unknown reason the BT transmitter will just quit. You try to turn BT on and it just doesn't happen. Someone here reported that they were able to fix this by sending a file via BT which somehow "woke up" the BT antenna and got it working again, but I haven't had to test that fix yet (thankfully).

Finally Cellular network, Wi-Fi and BT can all be turned on and off, independently of each other.