8890 - cannot find other gsm network, pls help.

[accordz]

hi guys! can you tell what could be the problem in this scenario.

in our country (Philippines) there 3 gsm providers specifically globe, smart, sun. an 8890 used to have a sim from smart and it's working perfectly. the owner decided to put in a sun sim but no network was found (zero in the signal meter). with a sun sim, a network selection was done but it only found globe. none from sun and smart. to rule out the problem is with the phone, i simply put in a globe sim and did a network selection again. it only showed globe, none from sun and smart. what could be the problem? is it locked?

all your reply will be greatly appreciated.

[xqz]

It's probably not sim-locked. Cause if it was sim-locked the
phone would say "sim refused" if you placed a 'strange' sim.

What might be an issue is that the 8890 works on 900/1900
frequencies. If Smart and Sun operate on the 1800 frequency
you can't use them on the Nokia 8890.

regards,
allard.

[accordz]

sun uses 1800 and i think smart uses 900/1800.
that's what i suspect at first but i know 8890 is a tri-band phone. correct me if i'm wrong.

[emul8d]

Phillipines has two signal, 900/1800,
8890 is a Dual-Band Phone 900/1900
Smart, Globe & Sun operates in 900/1800 signals, therefore your phone will work in 900 frequency, the problem now is on the handset's software!
Because i've downloaded some Nokia Flash files, and i've observed that Old nokia software/flash doesn't support Sun Cellular (Digitel) on the handset's PPM packs, to address this problem, you need to flash the phone with newer Firmware/flash, or just edit the PPM, on PPMedit by tnp add an operator on PH, with the settings of 515 - (Philippines Country Code) & 05 - (Digitel's Network Code) example (515-01 Islacom, 515-02 Globe, 515-03 Smart, 515-04 Empty, 515-05 Digitel)

If you've downloaded the flash from the phone and have seen that the PPM has digitel in it, then the problem now is on the Sun Cellsite near you, it operates at 1800 not dual mode (900/1800) as most Cellsite should be!

[emul8d]

8890 can be flashed with 8850, 8210 full flash files!
8850 and 8210 work in 900/1800, it just happens if you flash 8850 on 8890 the analog watch screensaver is removed!
But it will work on Sun Cellular!
If you want, Read, Download & Save the Full flash from the 8890 phone, use Rolis Flasher 4.7X, It should have the read address of 200000 to 400000 (2mb in FLS format, 1MB if Zipped) Zip it and send that on my email [email protected] and i'll modify the Full Backup's PPM for you! :)

[xqz]

Originally posted by emul8d
8890 can be flashed with 8850, 8210 full flash files!
8850 and 8210 work in 900/1800, it just happens if you flash 8850 on 8890 the analog watch screensaver is removed!
But it will work on Sun Cellular!


also to original poster: the 8890 is NOT a triband phone. It only supports 900/1900 frequencies and NOT the 1800 one. You could flash it with 8850/8210 flashes but that will NOT make the phone a 1800-capable phone.

The 900/1900 is defined by hardware, not software.