How did YOU get into the world of cell phones?

[flashmasterz]

Hey guys well I figured this would be some good reading.

So what made you guys/gals wanna start "flashing" phones?

As for me Well to be honest no one in my area actually knew what they were doing, and I was tired of all the piss poor attitude I was getting from shops.

So About two years ago or so I took it upon myself to research and google was my best friend! HAHA Now I was scammed a few times so noobs if your reading this beware of sellers! If you want something done you must do it yourself! Thats what I learned.

Also I found working on phones was a good stress reliever! haha so share your short story on how you got started?

[meanngreen04]

Bought a Palm Tungsten at a thrift store for $25 and sold it for $175 on eBay. Looked for everything to eBay on. Stumbled across Craigslist and started buying things. Everyone wanted a certain phone for our carrier but no one had em. I stumbled across m-f and started reading about 5-7 hours a night. Next thing you know, I quit my real job and picked this one up. Nothing more fun than tackling a new phone and trying to figure it out. The community here is full of people more intelligent and more connected than I'd ever be. I feed off them and in turn have learned many new solutions. Try to give back however I can with compensation, testing, or the like.

[Mr._Pseudonym]

;^) I looked over the marketplace and decided that the best value for wireless provision was Cricket, while the best smartphone to suit me was the Treo 755p. A little research showed that they both used CDMA, and thus it should be possible to use the Treo on Cricket.

A shop in town copied a Cricket PRL for me, and activated it, but could not get Cricket Internet working. I was on my own for that.

Soooo, I hopped online and began searching. This lead me to several cell phone forums, but no tutorial existed for the 755p. Instead I found threads from other folks asking how to do it.

Eventually I learned how to do it for a different model, and adapted the technique to the 755p. Then, I wrote the tutorial I had been looking for, on Howard Forums, and was invited to join the Cricket Mafia for my trouble.

:^/ That was about two years ago, and I've been tinkering ever since....

[GEMASPIRE]

Samsung Juke --- Started like June 2009 ( 8 months)
My mother tried to buy a Samsung Juke from a third party of the third party of a cricket authorized dealer. The phone prize was too high $200 brand new Samsung Juke. My brother then found $80 dollars juke from ebay and bought 4 phones. I then found that Verizonwireless.com was selling the samsung juke for $20 dollars plus $15 activation fees plus tax = almost $45 dollars each. Then she bought 50 Jukes, 30 she re sold to a dealer at $70 each. We have too many jukes that needed to be flash to cricket.

I found a cricket flashing software on ebay for $15 dollars. However, almost 90% of the content of that CD was pure useless and outdated software, files, and monster files. The only good thing that CD have were the links to Mobile-files.com and Howardforums.com.

Motorola Razor was my first Full Flash I have done. All because I saw it on youtube not because of the useless software I bought on ebay. We started paying a dealer to flash our phones. $5 talk and text and $10 Full flash. The thing that motivated me to learn how to flash phones to cricket was because I wanted to earn that money that my mother was spending on flashing.

Right now, I know how to google search, and know how to use the search bottom on the forum. Also, I know how to navigate the forum. I ended up trowing the ebay DVD to the trash.

Now I am a PagePlus Authorized Dealer, and a third party of the third party of cricket dealer (I pay someone for ESN Changes)

[thesmitty68521]

I got started when a cell phone place ripped me off. Now, I beat them at everything. I have better service, flash more phones, and more sales.

I got addicted to this as soon as I flashed a motorola Razr to Cricket. I love this and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

[whitey10tc]

I got started when my wife wanted her old Sprint treo 650 instead of her Lingo. I called around and all the dealers wanted to much to flash it ($80 for talk/text only) so not having money to spare I dove in and started my research and did it my self "a full flash." Then I did my old Samsung A640, and progressed on to posting an add on craigs list and helping a couple dealers in my area. I don't do it for a living but I do it on the side.
PPC are my specialty but I've done them all and I've learned alot from forums just like this.