I have a 8830 WE from Sprint that I want to move over to my Verizon Wireless account. I have the unlock code for the Blackberry so I can set up the settings. Is there anything I need to do to the phone before I can switch service providers? Since they are both CDMA it should work fine, correct? Do I need to modify or install a Verizon version of the Blackberry OS? Thanks for the help.
Take it to a Verizon corporate store. See if they can activate it for you and take the MSL code with you because they'll need that as well.
To do it yourself, you'd have to get your hands on a Qualcomm program called QPST and change the MSL on the phone to be 000000 (what Verizon uses by default for OTA programming). Then the ESN of the phone would have to be added to your Verizon account and then under CDMA programming on the phone you'd have to change a few things to get the phone to hop on Verizon's towers to do the initial *228 OTA programming. Kinda involved, but if the ESN is allowed on the Verizon network (Verizon would be able to tell you this), then these are the steps... obviously it would be easier to just take it in to them to do it.
Would they lock down the GPS seeing how it is coming from another provider?
:scratchesowneyesout:
The GPS wouldn't work because the GSP in all CDMA Blackberries depends upon a PDE server which Verizon locks you out of via some minor changes to the Location APIs that are triggered by the version and carrier IDs of the phone. So in this perticular case, since it's a Sprint phone, the API lockouts won't trigger, but the PDE info will be incorrect as they are set on the phone for Sprint's PDE. This can be changed with QPST to the Verizon PDE server, but testing afterwards would be needed to verify that the PDE is "open to the masses", which if I'm right... probably isn't, unlike Sprint's. And no, once you come off the carrier's own network, you cannot continue to use their PDE. So, you can't move the phone to Verizon and hope to use Sprint's PDE.
