I have been told by a contact at Bell mobility tech support that YES, the treo 300 will work on Bell Mobility.
I am still waiting for my serial cable to do the bitpim trick mentioned in this thread to first unlock the phone, after this, I will re-contact this person at Bell to obtain the new configuration information.
Keep me posted on your efforts to unlock the phone. Did you get your phone on ebay? Any reputable sellers that you recommend?
Also , could you pass along any info you get from your contact at bell? I phoned their customer service and I was told that because the phone i am looking to buy will most likely be an ex sprint phone and one that never would have been a registered bell phone, the bell network will treat it like an analog phone and some of the functionality will be lost(ie perhaps call display, and other features). Have you heard the same?
Sandals99: Reputable sellers... mine came pretty quickly and in the state they said, it's definitely not new but that how they had described it. They are http://www.abacus-pda.com/ but you can buy it from them off e-bay if they are still stocking some Treo 300's.
Henk and all:
The CABLE arrived!! Following the instructions in this thread, I was able to obtain my treo's MSL, which then I used to dial "##[msl number here]" This brings me to the "Activating your phone" screen which I have yet to fill because I am waiting for the Bell Mobility info, but sure is promising!
The cable itself DOES contain some electronics in the Treo connector side (small circuit with 2 transistors, 5 resistors and (what looks like) 2 small glass diodes). Since the price of the cable is so cheap, I don't think it's even worth making your own. (see my post above for ebay cable seller) (keywords for future browsers: MYO, make-your-own, build yourself, Bell Canada)
Will post again when(if) all is working with Bell.
this is sounding more promising. just completed an auction from a canadian vendor, waiting on confirmation of shipping the phone. Glad to hear the cable worked well to retrieve the msl #. i am scanning ebay for a serial cable right now.
let us know how you make out with activating with bell as i'll need to do the same.
thanks again for everyone here. lots of help and friendly people.
HOLD ON!!! Activating on Bell Mobility is not so easily done!!!
Unless I am not talking to the right people (beleive me, I tried and tried) the Bell systems do not recognize the treo. This is most likely since they upgraded their billing system last fall. ESN's carry the manifacturer and model info in them and if Bell is not aware of this ESN, it defaults to old analog billing plans, which are irrelevant now.
The situation may change, I haven't given up yet, but there is well more effort in activating my treo 300 on Bell mobility than originally intended or read on threads all over. Considering that time is money, a treo 600 bought normally from Bell would have been a better choice at this point. I'll pretend all this is fun I'm learning cool stuff :-/
Same as you man, liked what the 300 offered. I obtained QPST and have been able to change a lot of things. For example, by changing Home SID and Home NID to Bell's the phone doesn't say "Roaming" anymore.
But the problem is not there, read my post just above yours.
The only thing I can see is to clone some other CDMA phone. Right now I had an old Qcp-2760 which I activated fine with the digital billing plan I wanted. This is the phone I'd like to clone. From what I understand, this involves changing my treo's ESN. But this is much easier said than done. I've spent better part of the day looking for a way to do this. I have found "unicdma" software which gave me the false hope of writing a new ESN, but there is a locking mechanism which eludes me at the moment. We have to figure out if it is a hardware or software mechanism. (Bare in mind that it may be illegal to clone another phone like this.)
Wow, it seems like you have gained a lot of knowledge going through all of this!
I bought the serial cable from the same ebay vendor you did....did he/she communicate with you as to when it was shipped, etc? I have paid the person a few days ago and haven't heard anything from them. I couldn't use their channel advisor checkout so i just paid via paypal, maybe that's the problem....guess i'll have to wait and see.
Sanjay, same payment thing happened to me with the cable vendor, he contacted me the next day about a price correction, then sent a mail saying he had sent it. He was honest, no problems with him.
About home sid and stuff, I had that from a accointance working at Bell in MTL. But my old Qualcomm phone had all these settings inside too, one guy at Bell gave me the unlock code (aka MSL) so I could program my new tel number in it. At that point, I went over all the phone's settings, including Home NID and SID. But those aren't really secrets, if you talk to the teck guy at a bell store, I'm sure he'd share the info.
Edited by Vecchio: the following paragraph may not be relevant anymore, check my next posts
=== Development Well, I struggled and struggled, Bell Mobility will not activate my treo 300. Since they are the only CDMA in Québec, and that Telus actually rides on them (I called them too) I am out of luck.
The only hope I have left is to attempt to clone my qualcomm's ESN, which as I posted before, is quite hard... actually, its probably dead easy, but you just need to find the info on how to do it, and that's what's hard. Well, it makes a very nice colour palm PDA, for the price...
Originally posted by vecchio
=== Development Well, I struggled and struggled, Bell Mobility will not activate my treo 300. Since they are the only CDMA in Québec, and that Telus actually rides on them (I called them too) I am out of luck.
The only hope I have left is to attempt to clone my qualcomm's ESN, which as I posted before, is quite hard... actually, its probably dead easy, but you just need to find the info on how to do it, and that's what's hard. Well, it makes a very nice colour palm PDA, for the price...
The ESN is probably not cloneable. Older phones had the ESN in Flash, and could be cloned- which led to a major raft of people stealing other people's ESNs.
So, all new phones are *supposed* to have the ESNs in a static location, that is, in a ROM.
I don't know if they actually *did* this on the Treo, it's possible they didn't; but it *is* probable that one of the carriers checked for it and made sure the design was done that way.
The problem is, in reality, in Bell Mobility's software. There is nothing in the phone itself that would prevent it from working on any CDMA network.
Maybe you could have them enable it, and then switch it to a digital account with a different phone call? Important to try to analyze the reason *why* they can't do it, it sometimes causes loopholes to form.
Barring all that, are you interested in selling the thing if it won't work for you?
__________________
--apg
"Invention, my dear friends, is ninety-three percent perspiration, six percent electricity, four percent evaporation, and two percent butterscotch ripple." --W. Wonka
Maybe you could have them enable it, and then switch it to a digital account with a different phone call? Important to try to analyze the reason *why* they can't do it, it sometimes causes loopholes to form.
Hi APG, I assume you mean let them activate it as analog, but what do you mean by switch it to a digital account with a different phone call ? In the mean time, I will call them and let them activate it however they want (i.e. analog), probably in a prepaid billing plan for now.
Quote:
Barring all that, are you interested in selling the thing if it won't work for you?
Well, and this goes along with Sanjay's question, i.e. what other phone... This was really the phone I wanted, if I absolutely couldn't activate it anywhere, aside from being a bit bitter, I would wonder about keeping it only as a pda, but again, the whole idea was not to carry multiple devices with me. So I don't know yet. I have to say I'm afraid to say "Yes" and then you guys would stop helping me in order to get me to sell it! hehe.
OK!! So called Bell back and told them to activate my Treo300, then they'll tell you to go to a store for that, HA! no need to lad, me phone is owl unlockt owlreddy!! (thanks to this thread and QPST or Qualcomm PST ) Then when you'll give him your ESN, he'll say... euh, well, what kinda fone is that!? It's a sparkling, although a bit scratched, treo 300! Then he'll say: "bla bla bla, my system doesn't recognize it, I can only enter it as analog. " Then you say: "HA!, I mean, oh no... I guess I'll have to settle for analog (hihihi)" Choose a plan, I have to say those old analog plan surely look exactly like those new and exiting digital plans! Sheeesh! (All that agravation) Then you are laughing my friends. Note: You can also choose a pre-paid plan, although then, apparently, you'll need to speak to someone else for that... whaaa Talk about overhead in the company...
Here's what I did which *leads* me to believe this "analog" story only affects your billing plan, and not the actual communication with the tower: Using QPST/service programming/System tab, I set "preferred mode" to all it's possible values. First I set it to "Cellular CDMA only", then write that to phone. At that point, the phone goes back to "searching for network" and finds nothing (no service). Then I go back in QPST and switch to "PCS CDMA only" and that works (service and call performed)(Try *BELL or *2355 to test your service, it will tell you if test is successfull). The last setting is "digital only" I tried it, and that works as well.
The final definitive test I will do is to set the phone to "Digital only", then bring it in a location where there is only analog service available by looking at their "coverage maps". Unless someone else has a better way to tell if I'm in digital or analog? (the treo 300 doesn't seem to print a "D" for digital next to the signal strength symbol)
In the end, I think the only consequence this may have is that you will not be able to access a data connection with your plan, i.e. won't be able to use the 145$/minute internet connection, bouhou, big deal. By calling into their automated system, I just activated CallerId and tested it successfully, you can probably enable it through an agent as well.
AGP, you can still answer the question I had in my previous post... please.
I don't know if it's ok to post these things, but I guess they'll just remove the post if it's not ok.
Here are the Bell Mobility settings (since in stores they will not be able to "unlock" or program these settings.
From the sprint settings you only need to change a few things.
Don't forget, to get your treo ready for serial cable talk with PC phone apps, such as bitpim and QPST, you need to put it in "passthrough mode" by dialing ##3424 ("send" or "talk" or "enter")
slot cycle index:2
Nam name is what you want, I named it BellMob
Directory #, MSIN, IMSI_S: I don't know all the subtleties between them but mine are all my 10-digit phone number as provided by Bell Mobility.
Mobile country code (MMC):302
11_12 or Mobile network code (MNC):00
All 3 terminated registration items are checked.
(these next AMPS settings seem to disappear when you read the data back from the phone, oh well, no harm in programming them anyway)
AMPS registration: yes
AMPS 1st paging channel: 334
AMPS Home SID: 16420
Home SID: 16420
Home NID: 65535
The "banner" you can change to something funny. This is when it says: "Welcome to [banner here]" I called "HELL", no one else can use it!
BTW, I did the Treo 300 update 1.0.1 from Palm before I started all this, it doesn't affect the process, so I would recommend doing it as it seems to address some issues with the phone, unless someone else has a different opinion on this?
So how is your phone working? any problems with sending/receiving calls?
I saw your 2nd post above this one, is that all the info i need to make changes by using qpst? do you do this before calling bell? ( i already have a bell cell #, i am going to switch from an older LG phone to the treo 300)
Could you perhaps list out for me what exactly it is that i need to do in qpst,(unless thats already in the 2nd post above this one)
Sanjay, the post contains all the info you need to change. You can do it before or after you call Bell. What you do is you call them up and say you want to use this new phone with your existing account/phonenumber. Then they'll give you the store story for unlocking it... see my previous post.
hehe.
) Then when you'll give him your ESN, he'll say... euh, well, what kinda fone is that!? It's a sparkling, although a bit scratched, treo 300! Then he'll say: "bla bla bla, my system doesn't recognize it, I can only enter it as analog. " Then you say: "HA!, I mean, oh no... I guess I'll have to settle for analog 
Talk about overhead in the company...
By calling into their automated system, I just activated CallerId and tested it successfully, you can probably enable it through an agent as well.
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