[Apollo_Creed]

I just happened to be looking at some pin numbers and ran across a pin number with no letters in it. All pin numbers normally have at least 2 letters and 6 numbers but a few of them that I saw had just all numbers. Any of you know what part of the World, States, or wherever that these pins with no letters originate??

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[mobiman]

Good question AC, I would also like to know about this, if pin range are allocated to a specific country

[Apollo_Creed]

Good question AC, I would also like to know about this, if pin range are allocated to a specific country

So would I!! I just checked my pin number and it has 3 letters and 5 numbers in it. I'm in Georgia if that will help get the ball rolling.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[clintonroche]

Tampa Florida PIN #245CCD8F

I wouldn't think they would be specific to an area... maybe a country however.

[ADberry]

Interesting. Three letters, five numbers here as well.

[chaz_cb]

Only one letter in mine, and there were two in my previous BB.

PIN's are randomly generated, using the letters A-F, and numbers 0-9. To avoid duplication, they may have any ratio of letters to numbers in order to have the most available unique combinations. I find it hard to believe they would have anything to with location, but you never know.

[DinoBerry]

My old in PIN had just numbers, way back when I had a 957 (no, there is not a number missing I still have my old dinosaur machine, cute, in a brick sorta way.

[branden3112]

3letters 5numbers for me
2letters 6numbers for my aunts BB
4letters 4numbers for my dads currents BB
2letters 6numbers for my dads blackberry that was replaced
1letter 7numbers for my moms BB

All of these are 8100's except for my aunts which is a 8320, also all of them are in Minnesota except for my aunts which is in California. Does that help?

[josh33_unc]

my old red 8130 had all #s in it
i have a friend who just got a 8330 with all #s in it

its just a random luck of the draw. some are all numbers. some have letters in them

[frfghtr]

6 numbers and then 2 letters. cc

Also I think my letters might be in lower case.

I'm in Canada.

[branden3112]

I just happened to be looking at some pin numbers and ran across a pin number with no letters in it. All pin numbers normally have at least 2 letters and 6 numbers but a few of them that I saw had just all numbers. Any of you know what part of the World, States, or wherever that these pins with no letters originate??

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

i would like to know also!

[josh33_unc]

its random like i previously stated. my current pin has only 1 letter in it

[bmcclure937]

0 letters and all numbers here...

This has nothing to do with region of the world, etc. The numbers are generated in some form. I am sure that some providers have a large chunk of numbers... because I assume during the manufacturing process they follow a numbering scheme and a series of devices is produced for a carrier... etc etc

[jeffh]

7 numerals, 1 letter. Since the digits range 0-F, I assumed it was hexadecimal.

[inkwell]

No letters, all numbers

[Branta]

Any of you know what part of the World, States, or wherever that these pins with no letters originate??

They all originate in the RIM manufacturing facility ...wherever that is

More seriously, they are hexadecimal numbers (base 16) so each digit is from the range [0123456789ABCDEF]. The current PIN scheme appears to use 8 hex digits - each digit is 4-bit binary (F = 1111) so that means there are 2^32 (~4300 million) possible PIN variations before they run out. It is possible that the PIN also includes a checksum, so it could be 6 digits (24 bits) PIN plus 2 digits (8 bits) checksum - that's still 16.7 million unique numbers.

Each PIN is unique and permenently coded into the BB during manufacture, so it is reasonable to guess there is a pattern when the chips are prepared, much easier to follow a sequence rather than random generation and lookup to make sure it has not already been used. This sequence will probably get a bit scrambled during final assembly and shipping but you might find clusters of 'grouped' PINs in each day's production. After that, the geographic distribution depends on how the folk at RIM stack incoming product, and select the boxes for each consignment shipped out to resellers. One box might go to USA, the next to Europe with almost sequential PINs.

In a large geo market like USA I would guess you are more likely to find similar PINs associated by reseller (carrier) rather than by geography and it will also depend whether they order big consignments for the next month's stock, or just-in-time for today's customers.

[inkwell]

They all originate in the RIM manufacturing facility ...wherever that is

More seriously, they are hexadecimal numbers (base 16) so each digit is from the range [0123456789ABCDEF]. The current PIN scheme appears to use 8 hex digits - each digit is 4-bit binary (F = 1111) so that means there are 2^32 (~4300 million) possible PIN variations before they run out. It is possible that the PIN also includes a checksum, so it could be 6 digits (24 bits) PIN plus 2 digits (8 bits) checksum - that's still 16.7 million unique numbers.

Each PIN is unique and permenently coded into the BB during manufacture, so it is reasonable to guess there is a pattern when the chips are prepared, much easier to follow a sequence rather than random generation and lookup to make sure it has not already been used. This sequence will probably get a bit scrambled during final assembly and shipping but you might find clusters of 'grouped' PINs in each day's production. After that, the geographic distribution depends on how the folk at RIM stack incoming product, and select the boxes for each consignment shipped out to resellers. One box might go to USA, the next to Europe with almost sequential PINs.

In a large geo market like USA I would guess you are more likely to find similar PINs associated by reseller (carrier) rather than by geography and it will also depend whether they order big consignments for the next month's stock, or just-in-time for today's customers.

That was deep, thanks for posting, interesting read

[ediggity]

Aren't the pins' first numbers carrier based?? For instance, all of my tmo/att friends pins begin with 2, verizon/alltel (including mine) 3, and sprint 4...

[stanglady]

They all originate in the RIM manufacturing facility ...wherever that is

More seriously, they are hexadecimal numbers (base 16) so each digit is from the range [0123456789ABCDEF]. The current PIN scheme appears to use 8 hex digits - each digit is 4-bit binary (F = 1111) so that means there are 2^32 (~4300 million) possible PIN variations before they run out. It is possible that the PIN also includes a checksum, so it could be 6 digits (24 bits) PIN plus 2 digits (8 bits) checksum - that's still 16.7 million unique numbers.

Each PIN is unique and permenently coded into the BB during manufacture, so it is reasonable to guess there is a pattern when the chips are prepared, much easier to follow a sequence rather than random generation and lookup to make sure it has not already been used. This sequence will probably get a bit scrambled during final assembly and shipping but you might find clusters of 'grouped' PINs in each day's production. After that, the geographic distribution depends on how the folk at RIM stack incoming product, and select the boxes for each consignment shipped out to resellers. One box might go to USA, the next to Europe with almost sequential PINs.

In a large geo market like USA I would guess you are more likely to find similar PINs associated by reseller (carrier) rather than by geography and it will also depend whether they order big consignments for the next month's stock, or just-in-time for today's customers.

Yes, very informative and interesting! FWIW (probably nothing after all that up there!) the PIN on my Bold from TMo Germany starts with 2, has three numbers, five letters.

[kpxstar9]

Aren't the pins' first numbers carrier based?? For instance, all of my tmo/att friends pins begin with 2, verizon/alltel (including mine) 3, and sprint 4...

i think that might be true

i just checked my bbm and all my vzw friends start with 3s o.O

[Tilton53]

Nope because I have a sprint curve and pin that starts with 3

[Branta]

Aren't the pins' first numbers carrier based?? For instance, all of my tmo/att friends pins begin with 2, verizon/alltel (including mine) 3, and sprint 4...

A quick scan of a few pin sharing threads suggests a different explanation based on network type. Pin with first character '3' seems to tag a CDMA phone, first character '2' is GSM/PCS - and I didn't find any '4' series yet. I found most pin posters were using Curve (83xx) but a smaller sample of Pearl (81xx) seems to support the same pattern. If I'm right all your '3' series friends will be using phone model xx30 on CDMA and the others will be using 'not xx30' on PCS/GSM.

This also means you can pretty much tag a 3xxxxxxx PIN as North America because this is the only place you will find CDMA networks.

If anyone wants to dig deeper and look for the part of PIN which tags the series of phone then feel free I'm sure there's a pattern if you get a big enough sample.

[Apollo_Creed]

Aren't the pins' first numbers carrier based?? For instance, all of my tmo/att friends pins begin with 2, verizon/alltel (including mine) 3, and sprint 4...

That could be it also. I'm with Verizon and my pin begins with the number 3.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Apollo_Creed]

Nope because I have a sprint curve and pin that starts with 3

Just when we thought we were close to figuring it out, you blow the theory dead out of the water!! LOL!! This will be interesting though.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Apollo_Creed]

They all originate in the RIM manufacturing facility ...wherever that is

More seriously, they are hexadecimal numbers (base 16) so each digit is from the range [0123456789ABCDEF]. The current PIN scheme appears to use 8 hex digits - each digit is 4-bit binary (F = 1111) so that means there are 2^32 (~4300 million) possible PIN variations before they run out. It is possible that the PIN also includes a checksum, so it could be 6 digits (24 bits) PIN plus 2 digits (8 bits) checksum - that's still 16.7 million unique numbers.

Each PIN is unique and permenently coded into the BB during manufacture, so it is reasonable to guess there is a pattern when the chips are prepared, much easier to follow a sequence rather than random generation and lookup to make sure it has not already been used. This sequence will probably get a bit scrambled during final assembly and shipping but you might find clusters of 'grouped' PINs in each day's production. After that, the geographic distribution depends on how the folk at RIM stack incoming product, and select the boxes for each consignment shipped out to resellers. One box might go to USA, the next to Europe with almost sequential PINs.

In a large geo market like USA I would guess you are more likely to find similar PINs associated by reseller (carrier) rather than by geography and it will also depend whether they order big consignments for the next month's stock, or just-in-time for today's customers.

That was a nice informative post but the latter part of it was blown out of the water by Tilton53 as far as carrier is concerned. We thought we had it down to being the 3 belonging to Verizon but Sprint has that also. This will be interesting when we can figure this out.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com