Hello everyone,

Just got hold of a Blackberry 7290 on eBay and, quite interestingly, while it nicely accepts to power off - there is no way to power it on the 'normal' way, i.e. by pressing the power button. Only solution is to go for a hard reset (removing the battery) every time.

I have reformatted the Blackberry (javaloader -usb wipe) and reinstalled the latest version of the OS, but it did not help.

Any brilliant ideas would be highly appreciated at this stage. Thank you.

How are you turning it off? Do you use the button on the top of the phone or do you use the option in the menu? If you use the option in the menu to turn it off, then it sounds like the button itself may be broken. If you feel brave and you have a T6 screwdriver, you could take it apart and see if the button has just lost contact. I also wouldn't give the seller good feedback for selling junk that can't even start normally, that should have been disclosed in the auction.

Thanks for the idea. It does not seem to be the problem though, as I use the power on/off button to switch off the phone... Hence I am assuming the issue is somewhere else?

And, by the way, you are right about the seller.... Quite unfair not to have told it upfront. On top of that he sold me a branded (t-mobile) phone with a different colour than the one that was shown on the picture. Frustrating...
The dangers of buying from ebay!