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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.
OK it's a nifty phone with all the features enabled, but $519 who the hell needs it?
This parrot has ceased to be!
Could it be that the decision to cripple bluetooth was deliberate? Other companies should take note. Instead of spending money and resources on functionality, just get someone to sponsor a hack-fest. Just think of the free publicity and functionality that will ensue. Think of the increase in sales as all those code slingers seek fame and fortune. Just think of the prestige your customers will feel when they can say, "Yeah, I have the v710, but mine has been hacked."
Am I missing something? Why not just switch to a different network that isn't so hostile towards their customers. I mean, the fact that Verizon is actually saying that they don't offer a bluetooth phone because it doesn't fit their business model, despite the fact that many customers want it is ridiculous. Sounds like a path towards an out-of-business model to me.
I remember hearing people say bluetooth was dead and it was a giant failure. funny how now bluetooth is something everyone wants :) I wish my verizon phone had bluetooth, I'd love to get a jabra bluetooth headset sure would make talking on the phone easier during my commute to school and such. Ah well, maybe one day a service provider (that isn't crap) would handle a good fully featured bluetooth handset
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
The first hacker to provide a hack (or instructions) to enable OBEX and OPP features on the handset before Jan 1 wins the pot.
Correction. The first hacker's lawyers win the pot defending the first hacker in his DMCA suit.
Let's examine the situation.
- there's a hostile cell phone company
- you continue to use them
- you complain when they suck
- you stick with them, despite their ignorance, but you then post "rewards" to fix their problems
Umm. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to just switch cellular carriers? (Changing cell phone companies is not that hard to do!)
"Sounds like a path towards an out-of-business model to me."
Not really. You're assuming that it's an unsound business judgement not to give customers what they want. And going with that. You assume that the customers always right, and has the knowledge of the whole business process to back it up with.
There could be physical reasons, economic reasons, legal reasons. Reasons that the customer isn't privy too.
...then they should be smart enough not to waste their time and effort buying a crippled Moto V710 in the first place, or otherwise contributing to having more people buy the phones and becoming satisfied customers via a hack.
Who would a hack serve? Those who will continue to support bad business practices and companies.
For a comparable price one can find comparable "unlocked" GSM phones that have the original manufacturer's firmware, have all features enabled, and allow one to get service from any mobile company one chooses, often world-wide with the now commonplace GSM world phones.
FYI -- verizon no longer accepts phones with non-Verizon ESNs. Meaning... if you want to use it on the Verizon network, you have to buy it from Verizon.
FYI2 -- The phone in question sells for around $250-350. That ain't a penny.
With pot, everybody wins! ;)
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Ugh... ACs are soo annoying. Java doesn't suck, your obviously not a programmer, or at least not a serious one. "Oh look I can write C++ and I know a scripting language, I'm 1337." Any serious programmer knows the value of Java and of all the other languages. Java is very good at at many things. Writing cell phone games in J2ME is extremely easy and extremely flexible. Java is a very powerful language and thats why so many support and use it. Things such as the IBM funded Eclipse IDE put everyother IDE to shame. Netbeans is also a first class IDE and I use it along with Eclpise very often. The Java VM is very fast now a days, mainly due to the JIT. It often runs as fast as C++, if not faster. This is also why most of the Apach Software Foundation's projects are focused on Java, these include Ant, Tomcat, Jakarta, Maven, Struts, and a few others. I can't stand people like you who claim, or act like, they are programmers, and in reality they can code a few "Hello World" apps. Get over yourself. I code mainly in C++, Java, and Python, but I know the value of all the other languages and where they fit and how to use them. Oh and Brew is far more susceptible to buffer overflows (hasn't there already been an issue or two with that?) where as Java is generally safe from many types of C++ targeted attacks.
Regards,
Steve
I have to agree that Verizon is making the phones useless. Next phone I get is going to be voice only. I wasted a bunch of money buying a couple of Motorola 722's to then find out that I had to pay more to use every feature.
I wanted to sync my calendar/address book with Yahoo. I called Verizon, no program exists for syncing Yahoo to a Motorola 722. So I said fine I'll write one and open source it. When I mentioned this on the Qualcomm forms I almost got lynched. People complained about commies like me ruining their ability to make money and support their families. I said that I was willing to buy the program but none exists -- no one offered to write it.
Qualcom is completely against free distibution of apps for Brew. They told me that I could write it and distribute for free on the Verizon net if I was willing to pay the fees for all of the users. I also had to pay a $4000 up front fee. Turns out that they require additional app royalty fees to use the OS I just bought from them.
The offical reason for this "fee" is that Qualcomm will audit my apps to ensure that they don't contain a virus that would call 911. I tried to point out to them that a virus on home computers with modems is just as dangerous, but they wouldn't listen.
None of this is Motorola's fault. It is all Qualcomm and Verizon.
When my contract is up I'm getting a new network and Linux based phones.
If you have to lie to make sales of phones, the place you work at has shitty ethics. Honesty works, even with mobile phones. If you explain to the client exactly what they have to pay, and then fight for them over any billing errors (which do err on the side of caution for the network, by the way), you can make many clients and keep even more.