Earlier today, I checked my status info and noticed a change in my IMEI code. It was no longer the code beginning with 35 and did not match the label on the back of the phone. Given this is a newly traded phone, should I be worried that it is a stolen or cloned phone? The weird thing is that after a battery pull, all went back to normal and the 35 code reappeared. Should I be worried or is this a normal glitch? The code temporarily showed up as something like 0.123.012345.6.
I'd be concerned, the IMEI should never change, although it is as you say possible that the BB operating system had encountered a bug and was reporting the wrong IMEI...if that was the case though, I would have expected other strangeness too.
Got a bold yesterday second hand. The IMEI matched the label. After the 4.6 update my Imei changed ending in 123456.0. I pulled the battery and it went back. Tried it again doing the restore and same thing. On with AT&T now will post when I find out what is going on...
If the IMEI changes on a reboot (battery pull) you are dealing with software or memory corruption. Anything else is a hardware issue.
I suspect the most frequent cause for a *permanent* bogus IMEI which does not match the printed label will be stolen phones which have been given a new fraudulent identity. Second in line will be glitches in the original programming and unskilled attempts to debrand the phone using stolen software.
