A few months ago, I bought an unlocked Motorola E398 from eBay. The phone arrived, looked great, worked great... except for sending and recieving calls. My SIM card worked just fine on my previous cell phone (Sony Ericsson T226) but once I put it in the Motorola E398, calls stopped coming in and going out. It even gives me 4-5 bars of reception, and says that the provider is Cingular (which it is), but again, calls very rarely come in, and rarely can I call out. (Every now and again, for whatever reason, it works.)

So, of course, I called Cingular. They tried a bunch of stuff and eventually told me that they just couldn't help me and I would have to call Motorola. The phone was made for T-Mobile, but since it's unlocked, it should work for Cingular as well. I called Motorola today and told them that my phone never let me know when people were trying to call, and all they had me do was "Master Reset" my phone and change the Ring Style to "Vibe then Ring" -- Obviously, that didn't help my phone much at all.

Does anyone know what the problem is?... And how to fix it? I've changed my Network Setup settings around experimentally to try and figure out if one setting works better than another. I've found that these settings work best (in regards to getting better reception - not necessarily to get the calls to work) :

Band: 850/1900 (Automatic also works, but 900/1800 gives me no reception)
Type: Manual
Speed: Medium

Also, when I called Motorola, they said something along the lines of: "your card may need to be reflashed" -- what does this do?

Any help at all is beyond appreciated! Thank you!

› See More: Motorola E398 - Question - Also, what happens when you "reflash" your card/phone?