BlackBerry® Pearl™

[steppish]

Greetings all:

I've looked through these forums and it seems that many people have had the same problem I have with my phone.  That is:  the phone will randomly turn itself off for no apparent reason, at different times of the day or night.  There does not seem to be a pattern with any of this, and it can be very frustrating, especially when I am using my phone as my alarm clock only to wake in the morning and discover the phone is dead and the alarm didn't go off!

Pretty much all of the posts I have seen describe the phone turning off, but they say the phone also turns itself back on.  I have never had this happen.  In order to get the phone to work again, I have to take the battery out and replace it.  Once it is back in, I get the red light on the front of the phone, and then the phone does a complete re-boot with security check and etc., which takes a few minutes.  Initially I thought that the battery was dying each time this happened, but when the phone re-boots itself there is plenty of battery left.

I have already returned one handset to T-Mobile because of this problem.  After I got my new (re-manufactured) handset from them to replace my original one, the problem went away...briefly.  But now it's back.

Help!  Anyone have any ideas of how to fix this?  I like my phone otherwise, but this is a really irritating problem! Thanks in advance.

--s

[JSanders Resident Expert]

Try this:

Place a normal business card or  a folded piece of paper over the battery and replace the back cover.

Try that a few days and see if it continues to self-reboot. It could be the battery is loose in the housing.

[steppish]

Thanks for the advice.  I'll give it a try, but as I stated above:  the phone does not re-boot itself.  It simply turns itself off randomly, and when it does the only way I can turn it on again is to remove the battery and replace it.

[JSanders Resident Expert]

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steppish wrote:

I have already returned one handset to T-Mobile because of this problem.  After I got my new (re-manufactured) handset from them to replace my original one, the problem went away...briefly.  But now it's back.

---

Having two devices do the exact same thing tells me there has to be some software or third party application entering into the equation here... what other apps or themes do you have loaded?

Do you have Options > Auto On/Off set?

[watches]

My 8220 3 week old Re-Manufactured replacement shuts it self off and loops back and forth trying to boot up. This is ridiculous for such an expensive phone. My very old motorola razr works flawlessly and it is good that I kept it. Since I am a prepaid customer Rogers says I must return my new replacement in person at an Rogers exchange store and the closest one to me is abot 250 miles. I have nothing good to say about these 8220 phones. I have read and spent hours for a solution and cannot find one. I bet there are hundreds of these defective phones around so why don't Blackberry do something!!!  IF YOU BLACKBERRY PEOPLE READ THESE POSTS HOW ABOUT A SOLUTION. WRITE ME AT [removed personal information]

Message Edited by dany_s on 09-04-2009 12:49 PM

[steppish]

JSanders:

I don't have any apps installed...no Facebook, no nothing.  All I really wanted when I needed a new phone was a phone to make phone calls and send SMS's.  But, I liked this Blackberry and I have come to use it a lot for my emails.  But otherwise I don't really use it for an awful lot else.  Also, I have all the auto on/off selections disabled.  

The phone hasn't shut off on its own recently, so maybe it heard me talking about it....  

I did read once that if the phone is receiving a weak wifi signal it will search for the signal more often, thereby running its battery down and shutting it off.  But as previously mentioned, when I reinsert the battery after a shutdown (again, the phone doesn't attempt to re-boot itself, it just completely dies), after the phone boots up it has plenty of battery life left.  The mystery continues.

I do agree with the previous poster...there are other threads and many smiliar complaints about these phones doing this.  I wonder why RIM isn't working on a solution.

[watches]

Now my 3 week old piece of crap remanufactured replacement won't load the operating system. This billion dollar company will never get any more money from me, in fact I will steer anyone who will listen away from anything blackberry. I am putting this phone on Craigslst in many cities with a long long description and the price? I will pay fr you to take it.

[JSanders Resident Expert]

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watches wrote:

Now my 3 week old piece of crap remanufactured replacement won't load the operating system. This billion dollar company will never get any more money from me, in fact I will steer anyone who will listen away from anything blackberry. I am putting this phone on Craigslst in many cities with a long long description and the price? I will pay fr you to take it.

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Watches.. "won't load the operating system" is quite vague in terms of getting assistance.

What error do you see? 

How are you attempting the OS load?

Could you please state DETAILS so that if one might be able to assist you?

I have RARELY seen a BlackBerry device that is totally bricked and unusable other then from user physical  damage and water corruption.

[steppish]

JSanders:

Well, I was just about to post and say that my phone seems to be better, but right before I did it started randomly shutting itself off again.  Arrgh.  As usual, the phone is completely dead until I take out the battery and replace it.  Then the phone re-boots and is fine (for a while anyway).  I did notice that one other thing it occasionally does, and did today, is say "invalid sim card" and receives no signal whatsoever.  The only way I can get the phone to pick up a signal again is to once again do a power-on battery removal and replacement. 

Do you suppose that there is some possibility that my other problem is sim card related and it would help to get a new sim card?  I did have a problem when I bought my original phone (I am on my 2nd replacement now).  Right out of the box at the T-Mobile store, my brand new phone also said "insert sim card" or "invalid sim card" even though it had the sim card inserted.  The sales person at T-Mobile couldn't get my brand new phone to work and had to give me a replacement immediately after opening the first phone.

Any continued advice is appreciated.  Thanks.

[finnbogg]

Hi.

I have the same problem. I have two 8220s. The first one is on it's first replacement and over the past 6 weeks has shut down twice. The second one I have just received the second replacement for. Right out of the box it was used to send out 2 text messages and receive one text message. The phone had shut down and reset twice before morning. No third person apps, just the BB OS. It's time to brick these things. They are totally unreliable.