Slashdot Mirror

Verizon is known for doing this type of things with thier phones. Entire communities have been created to discuss the problems and find workarounds. Just taking a look around at Howard forums and you can come up with tools such as the balpatch which was created in an attempt to take control of the Motorola T720 for loading of pics and tones. Despite a user outcry and many letters written to them in complaint of abandoning JAVA in favor of BREW (a proprietary Qualcomm language), Verizon cares not.

Verizon is known for doing this type of things with thier phones. Entire communities have been created to discuss the problems and find workarounds. Just taking a look around at Howard forums and you can come up with tools such as the balpatch which was created in an attempt to take control of the Motorola T720 for loading of pics and tones. Despite a user outcry and many letters written to them in complaint of abandoning JAVA in favor of BREW (a proprietary Qualcomm language), Verizon cares not.

Check out HowardForums - many, many people have used BitPim on the CDM-8900 with no problems. I've yet to hear of anyone with an issue as was mentioned on the forums. ...I do seem to recall someone mentioning that the CDM 8900 uses almost identical software to the LG VX4400 (which is supported)...

Here is some allegedly official info.

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?s=ccca0 63366d40aa6b144195f9ad7c0cc&threadid=444756

The crippling was on purpose (and thus unlikely to be reversed) and the planned update coming has nothing to do with Bluetooth, it's about syncing over a data cable.

And even if the V710 had OBEX, it still doesn't have sync profile, so you couldn'y sync with many things anyway.

or here

I recently bought an LG VX6000 from Verizon, and after digging around for a while, learned how to get my GPS coordinates by messing around with settings, then dialing a special 922 number (careful, sometimes in some areas, it forwards to 911). Not exactly a practical way to gather it, but it works.

Anyway, those sites have just about everything you'd ever want to know about any cell phone from any company. The free WAP service that you can get on most Verizon phones is pretty sweet.

Face it - the cameras suck and the're next to no use for having a $hitty camera in your phone.

Camera phones won't be shitty for too much longer. There are a few 1+mp phones coming out this year that have CMOS sensors. These won't be much better than the current camera phones. However, LG will be releasing their vx8000 sometime by the end of this year and it has a 1.3mp CCD. You can see pictures taken with that phone here (WARNING: page contains ~14mb of pics). Sony-Ericsson is coming out with a 1.3mp CCD camera phone.

So saying that convergence sucks is only half right. It sucks in the early stages, but once it's matured it's quite a good thing. You just have to be patient.

According to some reports, the OMAP outperforms the 400 MHz Xscale, at least on multimedia code.

Note that the forthcoming Motorola MpX, another OMAP device, has basically the same hardware as the 6315, but is presented in a modified flip-phone form factor roughly the same size as the original Moto StarTac.

You might consider the Motorola MpX; it has everything the 6315 does, plus a few extras.

Since the linked site is Slashdotted, here's some info on the 6315 gathered from a few other sites (see links at bottom for purty pictures):

-Quad-Band GSM/GPRS device (850, 900, 1800, or 1900MHz)

-Onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

-Powered by a TI OMAP 1510 ARM-based processor running at 200mhz. Primarily chosen to conserve battery life.

-Onboard digital camera (for model 6315, not 6310)

-Snap-on thumb keyboard for quick data entry.

-Windows Mobile 2003 Phone Edition

-3.5" 16-bit Color Transreflective TFT

-64MB RAM (55MB User Accessible)

-SD/MMC Slot Onboard

-Weight: 6.7oz; 4.7" x 3.0" x .7"

=1800mAh Li-Ion Battery

Sources (including different pictures!)
Pocket PC Central
Howard Forums
SmartFone

Hi,

I really looked at the Hiptop/Sidekick when it came out, but I heard bad things about durability and reliability, at least of the older units.

I decided to go BlackBerry (the new color 7280), and I haven't looked back since. They are not as beautiful or fancy as Hiptop/Sidekicks, but boy, they are built like tanks! I've dropped my BlackBerry from 3.5 feet to concrete a couple times, with only minor scruffs to its ruggedized plastic case.

BlackBerry is more expensive to buy and run, and you still need to pay an extra monthly fee to get SSH/AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo chat, and the only SSH/telnet apps are still expensive.

The reliability has been stellar, and emails are amazingly fast (faster than SMS even) in that four seconds after clicking SEND on any desktop computer, the email is already on my Blackberry -- no 15 minute email polls, it's a realtime 24/7 email connection to a Blackberry email server (you can still do POP though, but at the cost of a 15 minute poll instead of realtime -- or use both POP accounts and Blackberry email).

File attachments now work (documents, spreadsheets, etc), there is no tangible message size limit for me, and I've got unlimited email.

The color 7280 can be upgraded to have full color HTML browsing (Either by getting Reqwireless, or an extra monthly fee for Hosted BES, or using the 'RBRO' trick).

The chat software is WebMessenger which does AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo and the telnet/SSH software is Idokorro MobileSSH. There is also now an open source ICQ program caleld BlackChat ...

I made a FAQ at HowardForums (A big cellphone discussion website) that describes the present cheapest way to get full TCP/IP access on a Blackberry (via Public MDS or via Hosted BES), which is a sticky thread at the top of this HowardForums forum page.

Reception has been great so far -- much better than Hiptop/Sidekick in my experience. But that may be explained by the extra GSM frequencies (850 Mhz) and continuing network improvements. I had nonstop reception between a few major northeast cities (both USA and Canada), the Blackberry sends emails very well even when reception is only 1 bar, and the store-and-forward quickly downloads (doesn't stall excessively) as soon as there's a smidgen of reception.

The Blackberry keyboard actually feels better than the Hiptop/Sidekick keyboard, and I was able to thumb-touchtype at 363 keypresses per minute (I'm pretty fast with thumb keyboards). I'm not as fast as that old Treo 180-series guy that went 84 words per minute in the Dom Perignon III Contest (at Fitaly) - do a google on "Dom Perignon III Contest" for more info. But at 72 words per minute (363 divided by 5), that's damn fast for a thumb keyboard!

And I hope the rumors that I heard are true that they are going to finally include TCP/IP with Blackberry OS 4.0 (at least on some networks) with full gateway access. The upcoming Blackberry model 7290 which is rumored, may also include a way to connect it to a laptop to use it as a modem (finally; they've been lagging so long). They make these devices too secure for some of us prosumers that we can't even use Internet on them until recently; they are more designed for businesses than for people like me.

BlackBerry has gone a long way from the early black-and-white models, and are starting to be more appealing to prosumers like me.

Some of the brighter /.'ers can check out the wireless communication specs. Some carriers are slowly switching over to the 800/850 band, but not my carrier. They're mostly at 1900MHz. Here's another article that's a bit more informative.

Yea, so: I think it's possible that your phone is on the higher frequencies while the other two aren't. I know for a fact my cell is @ 1900MHz and that i really hate it when people call before 9.

As a bonus, I discovered yesterday that the cordless phones in our house drown out my wifi cable modem. What a trip. Isn't it wonderful how they're both at 2.4GHz.

That would be Sprint's Free and Clear America. Fair and Flexible is the name of their new plan that charges overages in cheaper blocks as opposed to per minute.

"No Roaming" is a tricky thing. I don't know about Alltel, but with a Sprint phone it will try to hold onto the Sprint signal for as long as it can before switching to Verizon/Alltel/USCC/what-have-you. This means that if you have an extremely congested Sprint network, as would be the case at a large event where these COWs would be useful, your Sprint phone will NOT operate on Verizon as long as it can find a Sprint signal. You can force the phone to choose the roaming carrier first, but this would involve manually editing the phones PRL, which, while possible (others have done it, do a search on howardforums), is not something the average or even above-average user can do.

Of course, YMMV, since some phones will switch over to roaming before others.

The marriage of wifi and gprs *seem* cool, but the practical limitations of the device really limit it. Take, for example, the Motorola MpX -- sure, it'll run great on a gprs connection. However, unless you remember to explicitly stop and start the wifi module, your battery will be dead in a matter of hours, as both the gprs radio and the wifi module are not exactly the most power-efficient chips.

Review of aforementioned Motorola MpX

I always get so puzzled when people create a phone with a touchscreen (read: FRAGILE) and not make it clamshell design.

like the Motorola MPX

I walk around with a phone, not in an armoured purse, not with 4 bodyguards around me but no.. *drumroll* just in my jeans pocket.

If I, for some alcoholic reason, bump phone-first into something less soft than say a baby's bottom, Id like the screen to survive, please.

And don't come to me about protective cases, this design is flawed from the beginning, and I don't want to have to peel of 4 layers if 'skin' before I can answer the phone or use more than 2% of the device's functions. Thanks.

include the Motorola MpX, due in Q4, and the iPAQ 6300 series, due out in the next 30-60 days. Both are GSM/GPRS phones -- my understanding is that they'll be software-upgradable to EDGE once the carriers roll it out.

include the Motorola MpX, due in Q4, and the iPAQ 6300 series, due out in the next 30-60 days. Both are GSM/GPRS phones -- my understanding is that they'll be software-upgradable to EDGE once the carriers roll it out.

For T-Mobile customers: all T-Mobile accounts -- including prepaid EasySpeak customers -- have free WAP access available. T-Mobile doesn't charge minutes usage or bandwidth used for GPRS internet access. If your cell phone can connect to your laptop via Bluetooth, IR or with a cable, this means free internet access via GPRS from your laptop. The speeds aren't great, about that of a 56K modem, but definitely useable for the convenience it offers. Check out T-Mobile.HowardForums.com for more details and discussion. If you're interested, more information on my experience with T-Mobile GPRS internet access and a Nokia 6610 here and here.

A lot of us Canadians love to hate Rogers -- and I don't use Rogers Internet (I use DSL):

Incidentially, according to DSLReports, incidentally a few users are getting lucky where Rogers actually called them (huh?) and offered a free upgrade to DOCSIS 2.0 compatible cable modems. Some users' download speeds actually doubled.

According to forums on this site, Rogers finished deploying a new 850 Mhz GSM cellphone network at the end of December 2003 where there's been great improvements (i.e. some HowardForums.com claims from worse than Fido/Bell/Telus to better than Fido/Bell/Telus). Pity you need a new cellphone to take advantage of the new reception and less dropped calls. There were a couple of reports at the HowardForums of big jumps in receptions in lots of areas, 1 bar reception in Toronto Union station jumped to 5 bars with new 850 Mhz GSM phone. This is attributable to 850 Mhz penetrating buildings and foilage much better than 1900 Mhz. (On HowardForums.com, search for "850 improvement" (click here), perhaps combined with the term "Mad Seeg", a humorous term used by dozens of posters there, slang phrase for "amazing signal")

It's a little easier to get lucky with cable Internet and cellphones now with them, and maybe a couple less unlucky Rogers victims, but Rogers customer service is still MIA. At least, Rogers cellphone reception is finally now easier to get than Rogers customer service.

ln -sf /dev/random /dev/RogersCustomerService

A lot of us Canadians love to hate Rogers -- and I don't use Rogers Internet (I use DSL):

Incidentially, according to DSLReports, incidentally a few users are getting lucky where Rogers actually called them (huh?) and offered a free upgrade to DOCSIS 2.0 compatible cable modems. Some users' download speeds actually doubled.

According to forums on this site, Rogers finished deploying a new 850 Mhz GSM cellphone network at the end of December 2003 where there's been great improvements (i.e. some HowardForums.com claims from worse than Fido/Bell/Telus to better than Fido/Bell/Telus). Pity you need a new cellphone to take advantage of the new reception and less dropped calls. There were a couple of reports at the HowardForums of big jumps in receptions in lots of areas, 1 bar reception in Toronto Union station jumped to 5 bars with new 850 Mhz GSM phone. This is attributable to 850 Mhz penetrating buildings and foilage much better than 1900 Mhz. (On HowardForums.com, search for "850 improvement" (click here), perhaps combined with the term "Mad Seeg", a humorous term used by dozens of posters there, slang phrase for "amazing signal")

It's a little easier to get lucky with cable Internet and cellphones now with them, and maybe a couple less unlucky Rogers victims, but Rogers customer service is still MIA. At least, Rogers cellphone reception is finally now easier to get than Rogers customer service.

ln -sf /dev/random /dev/RogersCustomerService

You might have to dig for what you want though. It might be helpful if you had a couple of models in mind to start with and searched for reviews on them.

That will work fine, and if you have a IR phone (such as the Ericsson R520m) you don't even need BT, although it's a lot more convenient. This week I got an HP iPAQ H4355, and typing on the thumboard is actually quite acceptable, even for longer emails. It also makes it a lot easier to enter all those awkward internetty characters that are a pain to enter with a stylus. Plus, it's got WiFi, which is da bomb ;->.

Incidentally, you can get T-Zones Pro for $9.99 and enjoy practically the same unlimited access. Check out this thread on Howard Forums.

Actually, you can get their T-Zones Pro plan for $9.99 and you also get unlimited access. Not officially full Internet access, since it uses their WAP gateway, but it turns out that they don't actually restrict access to the internet anyway. Check out this thread on Howard Forums. People have been getting unlimited internet access for ten bucks for a while now.

T-Mobile customers now get free, unlimited GPRS. You don't need the T-zones package or anything. I believe the only port open is 80, so you might not get FTP or SSL access using an IR/Bluetooth capable phone as a modem, but still, it's completely free and unmetered.

There's a HowardForums thread about it.

From my understanding of what "Number Portability" was to bring to cell phone users, the ability to keep your number and move to another state was NOT on the list. I understood that number portability was implemented so that someone could move from one cell phone carrier to another and keep the same number.

That's not to say that isn't possible, and I've heard several stories of people who have moved and kept their number. I think that is totally up to the carrier in question and their infrastructure and billing systems. I do not think this was an FCC-mandated feature.

To be honest, I'm surprised the FCC allows it.

You can read more about number portability, success and horror stories, provider discussions, and cell phone capabilities over at Howard Forums. Very good, very high traffic. It's like Slashdot for cell phones. =)

If you are on the west coast, then you are using Cingular's network anyway. T-Mobile maintains the GSM network for the east coast and Cingular carrys the west coast one, I believe.

Not quite.

With T-Mobile, you dont need "t-zones" to get WAP access. Every customer has free WAP access. It's been decided that essentially all t-zones adds is the custom t-zones home page. Kinda silly if you ask me, but then most people don't expect this and so they pay the $5/mo fee.

BTW, this is a well known fact. Just check any phone site like howardforums and see for yourself.

There's all sorts of useful phone-related stuff, including for the Nextels, at Howard Forums, http://www.howardforums.com

For further reviews on the S56:

Howard Forums

Mobile Media

ZDNet

I was off-contract with T-Mobile, and had experienced many bandwith problems with them. I'm near an interstate interchange-- traveling calls fill the entire tower. I noticed an amazing deal on a treo 600 on amazon, and decided to get it, knowing that I could port it to SprintPCS, where I have another cell phone, and much better service.

I initiated the transfer on Wed, 11/26. I had heard rumblings of portability problems with the wrong information being entered into the system, so I made sure "customer care" specialist repeated all of the information back to me. They gave me an original "due date" of Saturday, 11/30 at Noon.

Saturday rolled around and no transfer. I called back, and it turns out Sprint submitted the wrong address to the WLNP system. If the addresses don't match, it won't port. Nobody had called me in 3 days. To make matters worse, the address they submitted was my old address- 4 years and 3 addresses ago! It was my original address with Sprint, not even my current one they had on file!!

To cut a long story short, I've called Sprint 5 times since then, still no port 7 days later, and each time I call, they give me the wrong address issue, even though I've corrected it 6 times.

This most recent time, I waited 2 hours (on a landline) to speak to someone in the Sprint WLNP dept. They eventually got T-mobile on the line. Finally, they both agreed that it was the FCC-contracted third party that was the holdup, but that their system was in the middle of an "update" and was unaccessable for 2 hours. (In the middle of a business day?!!?)

This system is not working. If these companies had spent the time and effort making this work instead of fighting it, and maybe tested it at least once, it would work better.

But because there are so many parties involved, they figured they didn't have to, because there are 2 other people they can point the finger at.

I've yet to hear from a single AT&T person online who's successfully ported.

If you've having problems such as me, make sure to REPORT IT.

Other resources I've been using, mostly to comisserate:

Howard Forums
Sprintusers.com
Number portability forum

Wait until they get the kinks out-- the system should take but a few hours, not more than a week!

If Nokia can stay on top of mobile phones, then they can stay on top of wireless technology as a whole (handheld=>phone integration), and compete heavy with the top dogs, then they have a shot at making it past the tech bottleneck coming in 2009. While I'm at it, I should say that this is a suspicious move from Nokia.

"The move is seen as a tactic to fight off Microsoft and dominate the lucrative and growing mobile phone software market."

I see it as a parallel to the problems Palm was having when they tried to get control of Symbian in 2001. This could be a sign Nokia is in trouble.

This is also good news for shareholders in Psion, as a similar event caused a jump in share price back in 2001 when Palm tried to get control of Symbian.

I never had to bother with this as my network operator (O2, previously known as BT Cellnet, in the UK) doesn't lock handsets subsidised by pay-monthly contracts. Furthermore, those UK network operators that do lock handsets are legally obliged to unlock them on request once any minimum contract period is up (for a limited fee). The US GSM operators apparently do this too though I don't know whether they are legally obliged to. Anyway, most handsets can be unlocked quite easily with the right cable and software. Once your contract period is up you are under no obligation to stick with the same network so AFAIK this is perfectly legal.

I became curious about the possiblities of a dashboard computer a few weeks ago. Many people have done it themselves with mini-ITX and other low power, small form factor motherboards. A few companies sell car computers, but I have not been impressed. Currently, there are many separate systems on the market, such as DVD players for passengers and MP3 players for the stereo. Dashboard space is precious, though. Of course, there are the standard stereo and climate control dash components on the dash, too. Navigation is another clearly useful role. One system, although possibly using mostly independent parts for stability reasons, should allow all these features on the dash.

I read about Wayfinder at Howard Forums. It uses a Bluetooth GPS unit and a mobile phone running Symbian to provide navigation. Service currently is for western Europe. I do not think it includes information about current road conditions.

Navigation Technologies seems to be the system many automobile manufacturers are now selling in their cars. They release updates on CD or DVD, but they are annual. I have read users complain about outdated information.

Both of these approaches are incomplete. A better navigation system is obvious. It should have an onboard database, and it should communicate with a server farm. It would have some processing power and static information, probably distributed annually by DVD, so that it can remain useful even when there is no wireless signal. It also would connect through a cell network, possibly through a GSM/GPRS Bluetooth phone as in the Wayfinder approach, to query a server that has both updates of the slowly changing information, such as maps and phonebooks, and the quickly changing information, such as weather and traffic. It would interact via voice. Why I cannot buy such a system is beyond me.

Cingular was TDMA, not CDMA. They have alot of upgrading to do here in Conencticut (50+ towers) untill they reach the same footprint as they did with TDMA.

And let me put in a plug for Howardforums , find all your cell phone info there.

www.HowardForums.com is a very active discusion board with catagories for all providers and for all equipment manufacturers

The current favorite data plan is the 29.99 unlimited T-mobile plan, but check for coverage in the area you want to use it

Sorry to disappoint.

Assuming you're on the America's Choice plan, I think the coverage should follow similar to that plan though the extended network may not support it. (Extended network = non-Verizon towers)

I also think the $99 would be an option that goes on top of your existing plan.

I doubt it'll work in Canada because the single rate Canadian plan means that Verizon is dishing out money to the towers it has roaming contracts with up north. Since they aren't owned by Verizon, I wouldn't expect express coverage.

Yeah, that $11 I paid included shipping. If you need more details about Verizon things, check out these forums.

"Statements of coverage area indicate a knowledge of how the wireless companies have deployed sites. Which carriers have shared this information with the author? "

Actually, with info from the FCC, you can figure it out. For example...

Nextel Coverage Maps (Transmitter Locations)

Have fun!

From what I've experienced and read from other people, your experience is the exception to the norm. Check out this, or any other articles at Howard Forums, or any of these articles. I know that you can probably do a search for "Model XYZ poor reception" and get back results, but it just seems like a majority of owners of T68x phones are not happy with them. Everyone has their preferences for phones and if you want to try it out, go for it. Make sure you can return it if it doesn't work out.

I had the phone for about a week before taking it back. I work about 400 yards from the tower and I would contastly get dropped calls and poor reception even with a clear line of sight. Almost anywhere I drive I would get static, choppy sound, or dropped calls. The interface was ok in my option, but I didn't use it much due to the poor reception. It had excellent battery life and I was looking forward to using bluetooth. Oh well. I'm much better with my S105.

From what I've experienced and read from other people, your experience is the exception to the norm. Check out this, or any other articles at Howard Forums, or any of these articles. I know that you can probably do a search for "Model XYZ poor reception" and get back results, but it just seems like a majority of owners of T68x phones are not happy with them. Everyone has their preferences for phones and if you want to try it out, go for it. Make sure you can return it if it doesn't work out.

I had the phone for about a week before taking it back. I work about 400 yards from the tower and I would contastly get dropped calls and poor reception even with a clear line of sight. Almost anywhere I drive I would get static, choppy sound, or dropped calls. The interface was ok in my option, but I didn't use it much due to the poor reception. It had excellent battery life and I was looking forward to using bluetooth. Oh well. I'm much better with my S105.

I believe that the flat rate for unlimited megabytes turns back into a flat rate for 15 megabytes/month then 3.50 dollars for 1 additional megabyte after 1 year.

Basically the consensus is that this whole 'unlimited' thing is an experiment of sorts, and the provider thinks that most people will end up using less than 5MB per month (because of the way webpages are reformatted before being sent over the air to the device), but they put that clause in there in case they are wrong and people actually use a lot more bandwidth.

After they get a year to watch how much people *really* use, they will probably tweak all their plans anyway.

More discussion here.

Howard Chui runs an excellent site with cell phone reviews. His forums have alot of information about differnet providers. I highly recommend this site.

Illegal or not, there's really no need to change your IMEI anyway (even for criminals) since a good majority of IMEI's are never entered into the system at the time of purchase (at least in north america), and therefore can not be blacklisted if stolen. For more info, do a search for IMEI at howardforums.com -SJC

That seems like a very low number of sucessful SMS and email messages. I've never had a problem sending unless the network is -really- busy (happened once, said SMS could be sent, try again later) Try heading over to Howard's forums and see if anyone else has the same problems (they have forums for each provider)

Useless tidbit: Text messaging is all the rage in Europe and a lot of phones come with a preset selection of messages you can send, in addition to those you can write yourself.

BTW a good site for discussing cellphones and the various providers, for those of you in North America is http://www.howardforums.com/.