MMMiii!

I have a new phone. It’s a Nokia N80 Internet Edition. Eelai had to return the Chinese Motobuddy (A rip-off of a Motorola business PDA phone) because of business and personal reasons and she lent me her Nokia 5300 at first. But then her brother’s leaving for the US and left her his N80. Eelai didn’t like the N80 so we switched.

At first, I was so happy (and sleepy) because I had a new phone, again. The N80 was very new. It probably wasn’t used much. I was playing with its Internet features the whole night while trying to sleep. And then a message came in. I opened my inbox, and clicked open the message. “General: System Error”, and then it will keep showing that and when you press the end call button, the phone will restart. If you don’t, you’ll have to remove the battery to make it stop.

It did that over and over again. I kind of realized now why it was unwanted. Because it wasn’t working properly. It was my College graduation the next day and I was having a hard time with it because I couldn’t exchange text messages with people properly.

That night, I did some research and came up with five possible reasons why that error message comes up.

1. Firmware sucks and it needs to be updated. The version 4.0707.0.7 is said to be really buggy. If you have a European phone, the version you could upgrade to is 5.0719.0.2. If you don’t have a European phone, you’ll have to change the product code of your phone by downloading some programs and doing a lot of stuff.
2. The Network Settings is not set to GSM and but Dual Mode.
3. Either phone memory or memory card is corrupt and you need to either reset it to factory settings or format the memory card.
4. The phone is broken and you’ll have to bring it to a Nokia business center.
   
5. The SIM is not 3G compatible.

When I got the phone, the version of the firmware was 4.0632.0.38. So I tried upgrading the firmware, and I got 4.0707.0.7. I still got the same message. I tried doing the more complicated process of changing the product code of the phone but I just couldn’t make it work so I gave up.

I changed the Network setting to GSM from Dual Mode and I was still getting the same error message.

I formatted the memory and reset the phone to factory settings and still getting that error message.

I borrowed Mama’s SIM because I know it’s 3G compatible and tried it on the phone. Voila, it works.

So… I just slept. Or tried to. The next day I went to SM to go check with Globe first before going to Nokia to have it fixed. I had a hell of a time talking with the stupid guard at the Globe business center because he said there’s no SIM card available for my phone number so I can’t have it upgraded. When he said that, I got the list from him and looked for my number (the first 5) myself and I saw it. I wanted to hit the guard in the face, because while he was looking for it and while I was looking for it, 5 people have gone ahead. If he had used his EYES instead of his mouth, then he could’ve found it faster and I didn’t have to unnecessarily wait for 5 people to go ahead of me.

And so while watching Mr. Bean, I went online using the free wi-fi from Nokia and just played with the semi-useless phone. When I finally got called, I said I wanted to have a SIM upgrade. And then the nice lady processed it and when I finally got my new SIM card which she said will be activated in 2 to 3 hours, I explained to her that I wanted an upgrade because my 3G phone seemed to be having problems with my SIM card so I wanted a 3G SIM Card. Then she said that I didn’t really need to upgrade the SIM, I just needed 3G to be activated for my phone number.

Well, I didn’t really believe her because I read that the SIM needed to be replaced.

So anyways, I left the mall and went on my way to iblog4 at UP Diliman where I needed to go anyway. Around 40 minutes later, Sarah sent me a message and I accidentally opened it, and Voila~ It opened. Then I remembered that nice lady’s words that I didn’t really need a new SIM, just that 3G needed to be activated. …. Oh well. And then I lost my signal. So I switched SIM Cards and everything was alright after that.

So… It was really just the 3G thing, perhaps. Or maybe the SIM needed an upgrade. In anycase, I’ve wanted my SIM card to be upgraded anyway. Just never had the time or money before when I really really wanted it.

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