I recently made a lot purchase of 80 used RIM 7290 Blackberry phones. Most of them either were stamped AT&T or Cingular on the outside and had matching sim cards inside.

Six of them did not have any name stamped on the outside. They have sim cards in them but there is no carrier brand on the cards. Does anyone know how I can tell which company these were previously used with?

I know nothing of these phones and I guess it is possible that they were never even put into service. It is possible they were only intended as replacements for other phones that workers in the company may have lost or damaged as time went by.

If they were never put into any service before can they be considered as 'unlocked'?

Wirelessly posted (8700g)

Try alt-cap-H and see if that brings up Help Me screen. There's another key combo, too, but I forget. From the help screen you will see the Vendor ID.

See blackberryfaq.com for instructions on determining whether blackberry is locked or unlocked. I suspect they are all locked.

or you can just power up the device and there should be a notification on the screen as it boots. Unlocked has to be done by a code, the devices are usually not unlocked from the start (especially AT&T). For unlocking (and I am sure a great deal) contact HorizonWirelessOnline.com - Horizon Wireless, Canada’s Cellular Repair Center ß

Wirelessly posted (8700g)

Doh! The simple solution. Boot it up! My bad!

Hey Mesostafa i can def hook you up with the unlocking. Im the owner of HorizonWirelessOnline.com - Horizon Wireless, Canada’s Cellular Repair Center ß send me an email and we can discuss price for unlocking all those units. Youll be happy with my quote. Send me a pm, and ill give you my email and we can talk from there. To see if they are locked, go to settings, advanced settings, sim card and type MEPD. its a magic menu, you wont see anything until its finished typing..

^^He de man.

As to the vendor codes, if you are curious, look on the device at, press alt + Left shift + H, and you will see the vendor ID.... compare to here:
RIM Vendor Codes - BlackBerryFAQ

Before you even get there, you've seen the splash screen (or should have), as Sith pointed out.

well yah, if you want the obvious EASY way out.

My way is more stealth, you know.

Stealth is your middle name JS, no one even knew you had 20000 posts even though you were way past that!

Thanks for the help. Alt-cap-H did get me to the vender ID shot but the Vender ID was not on the list that was provided. It was difficult to read the vender ID b/c the number was squished up again the right screen wall. But it almost appeared to be 101...which was not on the list.

BTW, I did reset the text to see if that pulled the vender ID away from the right wall but that did not help in seeing the complete ID. Based on the available vender number options the best guess here is it is 101.

I removed the battery and opened the sim card gate and swung the card away from the contacts and left it like that for 10 minutes. When I closed the card gate and reinstalled the batter it rebooted and I got a splash screen that just said Blackberry.

I repeated that procedure with both the AT&T and Cingular phones and I got the expected screen flash from both of them.

try putting the AT&T SIM in the other devices that are not AT&T branded to see if they are unlocked. get a number of locked devices to Horizon up there and you will get a great deal

I exchanged the sim cards as you suggested. Both the AT&T card and Cingular card still just showed a 'Blackberry' screen when placed in the Blackberry of unknown carrier.

Of course, there was also a nag saying it was verifying security software also. And a follow up nag indicating the software passed.

BUMP

Anyone else have any suggestions of how to determine the former carrier used on these phones? They are not stamped on the outside and the sim cards do not show a carrier name either.

Thank you

A BlackBerry splash screen makes me think they might have been pre-release devices.

Nevertheless... you are wanting them unlocked, is that the goal?

Look here to determine if the units are locked to a carrier
How do I determine if my BlackBerry is "unlocked"? - BlackBerryFAQ

Would the vendor codes work at all? RIM Vendor Codes - BlackBerryFAQ

BTW, how do you access "Help Me!" on the old devices?
For Curves it's Alt-Shift-H... just wanted to know.
Or did I miss that at the FAQ help page?

I wonder if your "101" vendor code could be "107", Rogers?

Nah, I just wasn't reading enough.

I just figured why you asked that.

No wonder.