I've noticed that when the 8700c boots up on Cingular, the display goes through some network updates as it identifies itself. I'm particularily interested if anyone knows what the difference between the lower case "edge" and all caps "EDGE" might be? Is it relative to signal strength or more of a confirmed two-way EDGE protocol status?

Thanks--

Maybe it's simular to the difference between gprs and GPRS.

most definitely why.

...which is?

Which is... Something that has been answered many, many times over.

gprs = your BB found a gprs network, but can not log into it. Likely either a provisioning error or you have found a network without a BlackBerry relay. With gprs you will have voice and text messaging only - no data.

GPRS = you are good to go.

Or when the network is down like last week in Canada for 12 hours on Rogers...LOL

"edge" was what happened last week in Canada (Nationwide) when Rogers was down for about 12 hours. "EDGE" was what finally happened when the data network came back up. Man, does Rogers ever suck sometimes...at least SMS/MMS was working.

I thought the deal was:

gsm = phone and other non-user-specific phone functions work
GSM = voicemail and other user-specific phone functions work
edge = browser and other non-user-specific data functions work
EDGE = e-mail and other user-specific data functions work

Am I misunderstanding?

edge = no data. That includes the browser.

You're close...

GSM means that you have GSM service for phone.
Upper and lower case GPRS/EDGE can mean many things, but lowercase for one reason or another indicates that you have no data service availability (could be a lot of reasons)

Basically put... lower case letters means the service is available to you (ie. the tower that you are connected to has that service). upper case letters means that your sim card/handheld has authenticated itself to the network/carrier for use of that service.

If you have lower case letters, you are connected to whatever, but the network/carrier is not going to allow you to use the service until you have authenticated your handheld to the network.

cd.

Think of it like the different layers of the cell network...

GSM is voice (phone, sms, etc)...anything you can do on an OLD Nokia cell phone for example.

gprs/edge means that it has a data connection to the GPRS/EDGE network but not to the BlackBerry network. If you have Idokorro SSH installed and your TCP settings set up properly for your wireless provider, you should be able to connect through the regular GPRS/EDGE network (I'm right now doing this with a SIM that has NO BlackBerry services).

GPRS/EDGE means you have a connection to the BlackBerry network layer. This is where you get connectivity to your BES for email and MDS, to your BIS account and it's internet browsing service, etc.

Uhhhh...Cory....lower case does not mean that service is available at all. If you put any SIM card into a BlackBerry and travel to a location that does not have BlackBerry services you will still get lower case gprs (if that provider offers GPRS on their GSM network. The indicator is just what layer of the network you are connected to.

Zro

Zro- thanks for the summary. I'm glad I asked for times when things don't respond correctly- now I'll know a possible cause.