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Motorola Hacker Rewards Program
Nuclear Elephant writes "Pen Computing Magazine recently ran an article about the Motorola v710, which has been crippled by Verizon. A hacking contest is now underway, and the pot is steadily growing. The first hacker to provide a hack (or instructions) to enable OBEX and OPP features on the handset before Jan 1 wins the pot. See the official site for more information." We mentioned this phone a few days ago.
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.
The problem with worrying about the DMCA is that it is not Verizon who can call for it. You see the hardware is create and owned by Motorola. So if anyone would complain it would be them. To be honest if I was Motorola I would be just as pissed at Verizon for castrating my product.
I suppose Motorola could go after the people, but really do they have anything to lose by people figuring out how to turn a feature on that was originally in the phone to begin with?
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
T-mobile offers unlimited data for 4.95, it's ok for email, but it's slow as balls browsing the web. Their customer service is also among the best i've dealt with. If you get good reception in your area, I highly reccomend them.
Dude, Verizon is a merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE.
Carefull when dealing with AT&T. I just recently got screwed by them! There website was reporting the wrong minute use for over three months. Every time I called them to ask about it they would tell me that I had plenty of time left. Now I am stuck canceling my service and attempting to switch. Come to find out that AT&T phones are crippled so that they will ONLY use AT&T.. I can use me NEC525 with any other service. On top of that, AT&T's automatic payment system has every payment that I made in the last year listed as "late" so my credit is fubar.
Simple. Every other carrier's coverage sucks.
Verizon has the best coverage, some of the best customer service (The ONLY time I've had any problems with their customer service was when 90% of their employees were on strike.), and the best quality control on their phones. (Which is why their selection of phones sometimes suffers.)
Don't like the v710? Go buy another phone. The article linked to is wrong - There are plenty of situations where people have activated Sprint phones on Verizon with no troubles (other than having to unlock the Sprint phone's programming mode. Sprint are bastards like that, whereas the access password for every Verizon phone I've owned has been 00000.)
I have a Kyocera 6035 Smartphone, with LOTS of features that are "direct competitors" to the ones Verizon wants to push. None of them have been crippled in any way. Same for the 7135.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I used to be a Verizon customer and switched to Sprint when the Treo 600 came out. I was expecting a decline in service quality, and was quite surprised the actual service was about the same.
What I did get was far more bang for the buck. For around $110 US a month, I get 2000 peak minutes, unlimited nights and weekends which start at 7 p.m. (versus 9 for Verizon), unlimited picture and SMS messaging, unlimited data, including unlimited modem use (thanks PDANet!), and a host of other features.
Bottom line, I'm not sad I left Verizon.. At least with Sprint I know I won't be charged extra for something as simple as an SMS message or photo transmission.
www.lonseidman.com
...I have to say that I would rather depend on ANY other wireless carrier OTHER than Nextel if I had a choice.
I carry a Nextel for work, and the service is horrible (Chicago metro area, mainly, but it's been bad EVERYWHERE I travel).
You're lucky if you can make a voice call, and you think they'd be better for data service than Verizon? HA!
I also have a Verizon account for my personal phone, and couldn't be happier with the coverage and service. I've had no billing errors since I opened my account in 1995.
I am, however, disappointed in Verizon's decision to remove some of the BT functionality of the V710 phone. I was looking to get that phone, and a newer PDA, and use the BT capabilities. I won't upgrade my phone unless it can do what I want between the phone and the PDA.
Ericsson, the original inventor of Bluetooth, bowed out last week - so, yeah, it is pretty much dead in the water.
Go away troll. Ericsson bowed out, Sony Ericsson (ya know, the guys who make the phones that actually use bluetooth) didn't.