I posted a few days ago on the “He’s dead Jim” post about my phone dieing the “SIM death.”

Basically what happened is I got off my flight from Warsaw here in Chicago and switched my phone back from Airplane mode. When I did I got an error, “No SIM inserted. Insert SIM” or something like that. I re-inserted my SIM several times and finally it worked. Except that when I called I couldn’t hear anything – and nobody could hear me. They could hear me when I hit a key – the 5 key for example – so I knew the call went through.

I called AT&T NBO and I got a cross-shipped replacement phone from AT&T and I’m back up and working fine.

However I noticed a couple of things with the new phone.

1. The new phone has two lock-down tabs for the top of the SIM. On my old phone these two tabs were not there so the SIM was kind of ‘floating’ on top and relying on the battery to keep it pressed fully against the contacts.


2. The new phone has lighted keys! My old phone had only painted-on numbers. This new one has a lighted keypad. Very nice feature.


The main thing is that the new model has the two lock-down tabs for the SIM card that my old phone was missing. My theory is that the loose SIM caused some kind of problem with the phone. I’d recommend that everyone check the SIM in their phone and be sure you have the two tabs on top plus the SIM lock. If you’re missing the two tabs use some tape or something to hold the SIM firmly against the contacts.

D

so there's a new version of the phone or something? my numbers look painted on, unless i'm in a dark area, in which case, you can see the blue light shining through them, but the screen is so bright, that the lights on the numbers aren't really necessary.

as to the tabs on the sim card, don't you have that little metal sliding tab? the two plastic ones are on the top, and a silver metal on that slides up to keep it in place from below?

I do now. Before I only had the silver metal slide, not the two on top. I think this was an issue with some of the phones that have died the "SIM Death" like mine did.

Talking about the sim death, I've had that happened to me, as well as the part where u make a call and u can't hear or say anything even though the call is connected. I talked to a sales-rep at an ATT booth in BestBuy. According to him and another call to ATT, the MPX200 requires its own original SIM for proper functioning with the phone's memory? I don't know if that's true or not at least after a hard reset and pluging in the original sim, no problems happened ever again. Is that why people are always talkinga bout unlocking phones?

Actually I didn't try a hard reset on my phone. I'll give that a shot and see what happens -- I already have a replacement phone any way so there's nothing to loose

Ok, I tried the hard reset on my busted phone and it still didn't work. I can call and connect but I can't hear the other party and they can't hear me. The keypad tones work though so I know I'm connected. Bummer, I was all excited about keeping my 2nd phone

thats odd because i'd think a change like that wouldn't appear on a phone as new to the market as this. anyhow, i'm going on one week with my phone and praying i don't have to post any horror stories like some of those i've read so far.

I know. I've been wondering if maybe I got a first-run production phone or something. I checked again on my old phone and sure enough - the two plastic tabs are missing. Perhaps someone on the production line thought they didn't belong....

that is quite odd indeed