Motorola MPx200 Import!?

[TomB]

Just got an offer to buy a Motorola MPx200 Smartphone from a dealer in Europe. The dealer says: "the phones are unlocked and cingular." What does this mean since AT&T Wireless is the provider that is going to offer these in the USA? Will this European phone work in the USA with AT&T? Is this legal? I am still confused about the term unlocked. If the phone is unlocked, why does he say it is Cingular - or does that mean it has to be used with Cingular but can use any software? Should I stay away from this?

[Mike Temporale]

Personally, I would hold off. The phone will be available in the US shortly. We know this because David posted this article on the front page (http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=32677&sid=7a53f9c7139e9c4b7a8eb2df813c011e) about a rebate promotion. In the article he links to it says (keep a close eye on point #3):


1. Pre-order Office 2003 between September 28, 2003 and October 20, 2003.
2. Once your pre-order ships, we’ll e-mail you the Motorola rebate form to the address provided when pre-ordering.
3. Purchase a Motorola MPx200 SmartPhone by November 30, 2003.

So... If rebate is good until the end of Nov. I would expect the phone to be on store shelves within the next week or 2 at the most.

If you order from this guy in Europe, you will have to pay shipping, plus duty and taxes once it hits the US border. My suggestion is save the extra money that this will end up costing you, and wait a couple weeks.

just my $0.02.

[Shaun]

TomB

The term "unlocked" in Europe tends to refer to the situation with the network operator. A lot of phones are released "sim locked" or locked to a particular network so you can only use their sim cards and their serivces. This happens a lot because the cost of the phone is usually subsidised by the network i.e. you can buy a phone that normally costs £400 for £100 from vodafone if you promise to subscribe to (and pay for) their network service for a minimum of 12 months. They then lock the phone to make sure you dont use another operators sim card. Most operators will allow you to unlock the phone after a period of time for a small fee.

This was fairly straight forward until operators began selling phones that you can also load additional software on to - such as the Orange SPV. What Orange wanted to do was to have as much control over the software added to the phone as possible so they decided to place another lock on the phone to only allow "certified applications" software they had checked first, to be loaded.

My understanding is that these two locks are completely independent. Remove the "simlock" on an SPV and you can use it with another network but you will still need to remove the "ceritfied application lock" to load non certified software

Your dealer in Europe is probably refering to the "sim lock" being removed. This should allow the phone to be used with any compatable network sim card. I think the phone is GSM so I would expect if AT&T use a GSM network the phone will work.

hope this makes sense

[TomB]

Thanks Blue and Shaun. I think I will wait. Although it sounds like it could be used with AT&T, I would hate it if I couldn't use a program like PocketTV because it was locked out of the phone...