ordered mine last sunday, left honk kong saturday, hopefully will be here by the end of the week, can't wait!

Mine took about 6 working days to get to my house.

PIUSG - auction is a little misleading - "In fact, this is one of the very small handful of black Verizon Wireless 8830s ever made and the only one you'll find on eBay." Didn't know Verizon ever made ANY in black...

quick question. do the smoke chrome rails come with all the black cases? i've seen them on some, just didn't know if people weren't using them or if you had to order them separate. i ordered the full black shell + black keyboard.

For all of you who purchased black housings from CNN.cn:

Does your battery cover have the "Qualcomm/3G/CDMA" logo on the bottom?

Nope, mine says something in French about radiation when making calls lol.

I came across a 8830 for cheap on craigslist with a scratch on the screen, if I order a new black case from cnn, a new screen is part of the kit, right?

8830 is better for tethering...it is faster.

Yes it does.

If you order the housing kit it comes with the side rails, case, battery door and tools (torx and rail remover). When you put the new rails on make sure slide the rail on the top of the case first then snap the bottom part of the rails on. You can watch a disassembly video on youtube also.

Yes, or you can buy the front cover. Unless you have really good instructions on disassembly, I would recommend buying the whole kit becase the old rails will probably get damaged during removal.

PICS OR BAN!

thanks for the info, but was wondering about the "smoke chrome rails" emphasis on "smoke" i've seen those and the regular chrome and heard mention of "extra sets of smoke chrome rails" i guess they are a little darker than the shiny chrome

man, ordered on the 8th just processed in NY today at 1pm! guess mine came by ship! looks like it'll be next week

hmmm, I had the verizon silver 8830 and replaced with the black case and smoke chrome rails and didn't notice any difference between the side rails. maybe they just seem darker next to the black housing vs the silver housing?

id have to agree...
i swapped the silver parts of my 8830 to black and re-used the original rails.
i really dont think theres a difference between the originals and the ones included in the replacement set.

The pics in the original post appear to be what comes on the Sprint 8830's. Those pics in the first post are exactly what my 8830 looks like right now, with no modifications. So I'm assuming yours had silver plastic or something (Verizon)? Mine has looked just like those photos from day one from Sprint. And yes, it's a nice sleek look. Very classy.

Not correct - the pics in the original post are of the Verizon 8830 with the black housing mod. Note that there is no carrier logo and there is no World Edition phrase on the lens. Verizon's 8830 comes in silver. Sprint's is black.

That's what I'm saying...my Sprint 8830 came like that from the factory - no mods. Although it does say world edition and Sprint on it, but that's no big deal.

Aah, I wasn't implying that Verizon ever made any in black! But we sure did--and from that perspective, a handful of black 8830s have been "made." A Verizon 8830 is a rare thing indeed!

It's all about the spin, man.