Looks like Best Buy sells an unlocked 920 that will work nicely on T-Mobile

tai4de2

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Best Buy sells a white unlocked Lumia 920: Nokia Lumia 920 4G LTE Mobile Phone Unlocked 920 WHITE - Best Buy. It's currently $367.

I found this thread (Newbie: I am lost as to the Amber update process - Nokia Support Discussions) discussing this phone from Best Buy. It looks like this is a Latin American rm-820, config 059R9W2, Colombian and Ecuadorian country variant. So it should be unbranded and have the complete set of Americas radios like the Rogers variant does, and get full 3G and LTE on T-Mobile USA.

One issue is that this variant does not have GDR2/Amber yet. There isn't even a GDR2 firmware for it on NaviFirm. However since it's an rm-820 I should be able to easily flash another rm-820 GDR2 firmware on it and have everything working. (I'll stay away from AT&T firmware since that always seems to introduce extra drama, remove band support, etc.)

I ordered one today and will post back with my experiences.

Best Buy also sells an unlocked black one, but I didn't investigate whether that one's an rm-820 or an unlocked "international" variant (rm-821) which as we know won't get LTE in the USA.
 

g808

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Looks like reviewers on the best buy site claim no t-mobile 3g or LTE. Seems too good to be true, but hopefully not.

Sent from my RM-940_nam_att_200 using Tapatalk
 

tai4de2

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It's quite possible that the reviewers weren't commenting on the specific SKU that Best Buy is stocking, but instead about some random Lumia 920 they got somewhere else.
 

wangsa86

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I have the black one using it in Aruba, as you mentioned no GDR2/Amber for it, I just lost all hopes and I loaded a Italian variant which works nice with my local networks LTE and even got the dev preview of GDR3 on it. Don't know when it will be released.(Colombian/Equatorian variant that is) Other Latin American variant already has their GDR2. So the question when is far from answering.
 

tai4de2

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Great to know it works with LTE for you but that actually seems like a bad sign because from what I can see, Aruba has LTE on a European frequency and not an Americas one. Seems really strange that you would get LTE on an RM-820 since only RM-821 has support for LTE on 1800MHz.

Maybe the black one best buy is selling is RM-821? Can you post a pic/scan of the side of the box, where Nokia lists frequency and model number? Or at least post the info from the side of the box?
 

wangsa86

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I have read somewhere that if you load an RM-821 rom, it will enable the LTE 1800 band. If that's not true well then maybe I'm on my networks HSPA+ band.
 

tai4de2

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Thanks, but this thread isn't about your unlocked AT&T 920's. We already know that those get T-Mobile LTE.

The point is that Best Buy sells an unbranded 920 that might just be an RM-820. I found that surprising. I would actually PAY EXTRA to not have AT&T's branding on my device, but the BB one is $360.

I'm waiting for Ship-to-Store. Should come this week.
 

tai4de2

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My order arrived today. What came in was an Italian rm-821, not the Latin American rm-820 I was expecting. Too bad -- I didn't complete the purchase as I have no need for a European 920 that's not compatible with North American LTE.

Best Buy describes this as an "Unlocked LTE" device -- which is actually false advertising since it won't get LTE anywhere in North America. My guess is that their supplier imports these from wherever they can, and some batches happen to be from LATAM and some don't. I guess I was just unlucky.
 

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