Post by Mike S.As I understand it, the way to truly tell what you are getting is to look
at the IMEI sticker inside the battery compartment. It lists the the
frequency bands the hardware supports, and the choices are etiehr
850-1800-1900 or 900-1800-1900. A P168+ bearing a sticker that says
850-900-1800-1900 has not been spotted as far as I can see. Obviously an
honest and cooperative dealer is essential to making such a transaction
safe.
They're using an older chipset, where you can't have both 850 and 900.
This makes it rather worthless as a world phone. The most widely used
band in Europe and Asia is 900 MHz and in the U.S. it's 850 MHz. You'll
have terrible coverage with only 1800 MHz in Europe and Asia or only
1900 MHz in the U.S..
When GSM first because available in the U.S. there was only 1900 MHz, by
Voicestream and the western region of Cingular, and TDMA was at 800 MHz
(AKA 850 MHz) and there were a bunch of tri-band "world phones,"
including the very popular Motorola Timeport series which I bought. It's
still usable in Europe and Asia, but since it can't to texting, there
are some difficulties when the prepaid carrier sends stuff like
passwords to the account to the phone as a text message.