Expert: DebiN - 9/10/2009

Question
I am planning on buying a nextel blackberry curve and I want to have it unlocked or flashed to use for the boost mobile unlimited plan. I was curious if all the features would work properly, would the email, sms texting, mms, internet and all the data services work properly without any problems? please let me know because I am planing on buying one very very soon. I want to make sure that my text wont be delayed or anything like that.

Answer
I am not recommending or endorsing this, but it's my understanding that there are sites where they will unlock a Nextel BlackBerry so that it can be used with Boost's Unlimited Plan. It's my understanding that you have to buy the BlackBerry from them in order for these features to work properly and the true BlackBerry email does not work, however, you can use data features. Here is what they state about this:

We purchase new Nextel BlackBerrys, install an unactivated Boost SIM Starter kit, unlock, adapt, and program the phone to make full use of Boost Mobile's $50 per month Unlimited plan giving you: Unlimited Nationwide Calling, Roaming, Email, Internet, Walkie-talkie, Real (SMS/MMS) Text and Picture messaging, IM, Chat, Twitter, Pandora (Music) and GPS Navigation.

Your BlackBerry is fully tested and pre-loaded with more than 25 software applications including:
Opera and BlackBerry browsers, Google Mobile Apps, Google Mail, Google Maps , Google Synch, Google Voice Search,
GPS: LifeInPocket, WorldMateLive, Nav4All, BlackBerry Maps and MyLocation - includes turn-by-turn voice instructions
IM and Chat: Nimbuzz (Skype, Google, Yahoo), EQO, Ramble (AOL IM), and
Social Networking: TwitterBerry, FaceBook, and MySpace
News & Weather: CNN, ESPN,Weather Eye, and BlackBerry Weather

This particular company called BoostBerry charges $415.00 for the Curve. If you think about that, that's a pretty expensive price to pay for a device that is free or very low cost with most of the carriers today. With Sprint, for example, their Unlimited Everything Plan is $99.99 a month and you could get Curve for $49.99. This BlackBerry will work for everything including BlackBerry email and comes with a 12 month warranty. The Sprint brand new device and service for one year will cost you around $1200 and with BoostBerry you will pay $100.00. For a $200 difference, if it were me, I would prefer the new device with a warranty with all the features and functions guaranteed to work.

So if you are buying the device and then counting on the features working, they won't all work unless you buy the device from a company like this BoostBerry or others who actually configure the device to work and then keep in mind that BlackBerry email will not work only what is mentioned above.

Hope this helps. Thanks. DebiN