Our service provider is T-Mobile. My wife purchased an unlocked Motorola W510 GSM phone to replace her T-Mobile provided RAZR V-3 that had been damaged beyond repair. The W510 was able to connect with the T-Mobile network after installing my wife's SIM card. However, the W510 was originally set up to be a China Mobile phone and contained menus and, in some cases information, in Chinese characters, which made the phone rather difficult to use. I thought that either Motorola or T-Mobile could resolve this with a software change, but they would or could not do this. I finally got the internal operating system modified by a local repair service - 10,000 Cellphones, Jacksonville, FL - who were able to flash the phone and change the software to a more generic Motorola look, but based on European use (the software for this change came from the UK), which was acceptable. The company that the W510 was purchased from was in the US (not Hong Kong based), so we had expected a phone that was originally intended for use here (with the US being the primary location for the phone user). Has anyone else had this problem?

After finally getting the phone to work with a more friendly interface, it turned out that the phone itself had a factory defect - the backlight for the small information panel visible when the flip phone was closed would not turn off. This reduced battery life to about 7 - 10 hours in standby and made the phone nearly useless. This defect was only noticed after the 30 return period had expired due to our efforts to get the more friendly interface installed. Looks like we will lose our investment in this phone (about $75) and have to acquire another phone - probably an unlocked RAZR V-3 this time. I am still worried about getting a phone with a foreign language interface. Anyone know how to avoid this in purchasing an unlocked phone?


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