[doood]

Does anyone know if it is possible to use a Sprint Treo 650 on the Bell Mobility Network in Canada? They both run a CDMA network. Also, is it possible to put the Bell firmware onto a Sprint phone? Does anyone have a copy of the bell firmware or know where I can find it? ---> treo650-1.03-bmo is what I'm looking for.

[plaut]

No - Bell (or Telus, the other Canadian CDMA provider) won't activate phones from any other carrier.

[doood]

Well, is it possible to pull the bmo rom from a bell treo and burn it to my sprint phone?

[plaut]

They'll only activate phones with Bell serial numbers (i.e., phones they sell). Don't think there's a way around it.

[doood]

Well, since I figure someone may be interested in this information, I guess I'll leave an update. I went in to a bell dealer yesterday, and the girl working wasn't much help. As soon as she saw the Sprint logo on the phone, she was quite un-interested in helping me. So, today, I went in to Future Shop, asked the phone junkie if he could hook up my phone, and 5 mins later I'm on the bell network with my Sprint treo 650. I'm still running the Sprint firmware, and I still get Sprint splash screens, but the phone works great! The only issues that remain are as follows:
1. The phone always says 'Roaming'. The guy told me it's because he didn't know where to put the tower information in the phone. Oh well, I don't really care about this one. The little meter guage works properly, so no big deal. And they told me I won't be charged roaming fees unless I'm actually roaming. It's just the fact that I'll never know if I'm roaming or not.
2. I can't connect to the internet. This isn't much of an issue for me because I don't need it on my phone, although I wouldn't mind getting it to work just so I can say I got it working I'll look further into this. SMS works fine tho.

Last, if anyone knows whether or not I can pull a bell rom off of one treo and burn it to my sprint treo, please let me know. I'm not sure, but I assume that if that actually works, I will have no problem setting up email and internet, and the junkie at the store should have no problem plugging in tower info....

[gavriels]

1. The phone always says 'Roaming'. The guy told me it's because he didn't know where to put the tower information in the phone. Oh well, I don't really care about this one. The little meter guage works properly, so no big deal. And they told me I won't be charged roaming fees unless I'm actually roaming. It's just the fact that I'll never know if I'm roaming or not.
2. I can't connect to the internet. This isn't much of an issue for me because I don't need it on my phone, although I wouldn't mind getting it to work just so I can say I got it working I'll look further into this. SMS works fine tho.

So I've been frustrated by the lack of availability of the Treo 700p on Bell Mobility, and I've resolved to buy one in the US on Tuesday, bring it back, and have it hooked up to Bell. After much back and forth, I've gotten the Bell Mobility people at a store to agree to do the setup, though they've warned me that I probably won't have internet access, etc etc.

The net access is pretty important for me though, so I'm wondering whether you actually tried doing the network setup on the phone. IE: In the preferences panel, going to 'Network', and entering in your Bell Username and password. The username would be something like '6131234567@1x.bell.ca', and the password is supplied by bell. If not, try going into a bell store and asking them to give you the network password.

I'd really appreciate knowing whether or not that will work, or if there's something else critical needed to make data services work.

Thanks,
-Gav

[theweaselslayer]

1. The phone always says 'Roaming'. The guy told me it's because he didn't know where to put the tower information in the phone. Oh well, I don't really care about this one. The little meter guage works properly, so no big deal. And they told me I won't be charged roaming fees unless I'm actually roaming. It's just the fact that I'll never know if I'm roaming or not.

You might want to double check about that... If he's programmed the wrong NID/SID/PRL, you won't be happy when your bill arrives and you discover you've been roaming even when you're in your home network area of coverage.

[doood]

Well, one thing I can say is that the phone works great although I am having some problems where certain friends SMS comes through as garbage. So, in light of this and the fact that I cannot hook up to the net, I've decided to try putting a BELL rom on the phone. Honestly, I didn't pay much for it, so I'm not too concerned about bricking it. I managed to pull the Sprint ROM off the phone using the grack ROMTool (for backup), and I pulled a Bell ROM off a friends BOM phone. When I go to put the Bell rom on my phone, the first issue is that the Bell rom is too large, but only by about 150K, so, following the instructions provided with the RomTool, and using the filellist.pdf provided from shadowmite (I believe), I removed the memo and calc applications safely from the Bell rom and it fits the 7 MB threashold just fine. Here's the problem. When I put the Bell rom on my phone, the firmware doesn't seem to take. The upload works fine, and the splash screens mimick those of the Bell rom. I'm also missing some of the nagware that comes with the sprint rom (like the GetBC app - which is nice) but now the phone won't work. Has anyone ever tried this? I put the sprint Rom back on my phone and it works fine, but I would really like to switch to the Bell rom. Do I have to edit 'tokens' using the RomTool? Any ideas?
Thanks.

[doood]

I should also mention that with the Bell Rom, everything works fine, EXCEPT the phone. When I go to turn the phone on, it resets the device.