Hacking the Motorola v265

phoric writes "Unfortunately, Verizon Wireless cripples their phones so that you have to use their fee-based service in order to add new ringtones, or to transfer the pictures you take with the camera. The Verizon logo conceals the date display on the main screen and covers over the top portion of the background, among various other corporate silliness. Selling a device that is intentionally crippled is just plain ridiculous. Of course, the only natural thing to do in a situation like this is to hack it."

Comments

Been Done Before

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Bitpim on sourceforge, it contains everything you could possibly need to hack your verison cell phone...
http://bitpim.sourceforge.net/

verizon TOS

[thegoogler]

he says nothing about the verizon TOS, and doesn't even warn that you could get your service cut off if they found out you did this.

that would seem like something that should have been mentioned...

T-Mobile's the last frontier

[yog]

I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile and have been very happy with them except for lack of coverage in some places. I can dial up my favorite ISP with my bluetooth phone for no extra fee, and did I mention I got a bluetooth phone? Verizon Wireless appears to have only heard of bluetooth about 3 months ago, and they seem to have only a brushing acquaintance with that European phone maker, Nokia.

Unfortunately, T-mobile may be history pretty soon, and that likely means more consolidation and less competition in the U.S. mobile phone market.

What's the next best option? Cingular or Sprint? I hear terrible things about Sprint's service, and Cingular just merged with AT&T Wireless, which had a horrendous reputation for customer service.

Re:T-Mobile's the last frontier

[Mr2001]

Agreed. I don't understand a lot of Verizon customers. Verizon's only major advantage is a coverage area that's a little better than most carriers

There are a couple other advantages. First is high speed data - when my cable modem goes out, or when I'm out someplace where there's no WiFi, I can get online at a decent speed with 1xRTT (faster than landline dialup). If I lived in a bigger city, and had the money to spend on it, I could get online at DSL speeds with 1xEV-DO.

Second is unlimited "in network" calling. This may be less of an advantage for you, but I know several other Verizon customers, and I can talk to them for free.

and their phone prices are outrageous compared to the other carriers. Who the hell goes for the two year agreement just to get the crappiest phone for $30?

If you've already been a customer for 2 years and you renew your contract, you get an extra $100 off the regular subsidized price of a new phone (under a promotion called New Every Two). That's how I got a free VX7000.

And hey, if you manage to get the phone you want somewhere else for less, you can probably use it on Verizon anyway. Unlike Sprint PCS, they don't have a policy to only activate phones they sold themselves.

Finally, the crappiest phone is $20 (for new 2-year contracts), not $30, at least in my market. ;)

Re:T-Mobile's the last frontier

[drew]

and they seem to have only a brushing acquaintance with that European phone maker, Nokia.

Nokia stopped making CDMA phones almost entirely back around 1998, when the majority of their CDMA phones were so bad that Sprint stopped carrying them entirely, and the other CDMA services could barely give them away for free (back before it became common for providers to give out new phones for free with extended service contracts)

I was on Sprint back around 99-2000, and I actually had frieds who switched to other carriers so that they could get that stupid little Nokia phone that was all over the place. I'm on a GSM carrier now, but from my experience with their phones so far, I would be hesitant to ever buy a Nokia phone anyway, even when they are available.

Re:Hacking the RAZR V3?

[puto]

Motorola Tools runs on windows. But as an employee of the Wirless provider that introduced the razor, I can say probably no. And the V3, while kinda neat looking, is mostly hype, does not do edge, and breaks if you look it. V551 is same phone, does edge, and cost less, and is pretty hardier.

Puto

not just the v265

[Matey-O]

My V600 had a great deal of whackyness I couldn't get fixed (garbled external clock, occasionaly reboots, oh and fi you return your phone for a refurb with games on it you've had more than a few months...you're screwed.)

So Google 'hack v600' and there's a plethora of nifty things out there for it. The BIG stickler is: you've gotta get a REAL USB cable...my first one had a black box in the middle that converted usb on the PC side to the serial interface on the phone. You MUST have full USB to update the phone.

There are two (and a half) levels of updates for these phones; Flex, Flash, and Seems.

The Flex is similar to a firmware update in that is updates the low level internals of the phone. In doing so, I noticed improved reception, slightly better battery life, etc. I didn't wait long enough to see if that alone would fix my problems, I proceeded to :

The Flash. Flash contains all the software that operates the phone. For awhile, I played around with a European software set that had a ROCKIN version of Monopoly (trust me, that's not a dichotomy of terms) It's major problem was a lack of american GPRS support. So I had a more stable phone, with some tnifty new features, but I couldn't surf the web using bluetooth on the busride.

I then found an american Flash that did what I needed it too. I still had to enter the defaults from mMode, and SMS stuff (luckily I had the wife's phone to refer to), but it did a pretty good job of squashing the bugs in the native AT&T Flash...

Which brings up an important point: the OEM flash is NOT backup-able, nor is it available via the usual suspects. So when you jump, you jump with both feet and no net. It turned out okay in the end (after I got the internet connectivity stuff worked out) but it's somethign to be aware of. If you're REALLY stuck on it saying AT&T, don't update your phone.

One of the mods allows for uploading java apps from the desktop (A procedure usually masked off by the cellphone carriers...they want YOU to pay THEM for this stuff) So I managed to get that european version of Monopoly back.

Seems are patches to a Flex that enable, disable, of modify behavior. I haven't tried them, and haven't yet seen the need to.

Lastly: While this has been v600 specific, the vXXX series of phones (6XX 5XX and 4XX at the very least) all support these flex/flash combos. so a cheaper phone can pick up the multimedia apps and some items available on the more expensive bretheren. (except where hardware limitations prevent it...face it, if bluetooth isn't on the motherboard, you can't turn it on via software)

It kinda bugs me that this wasn't available as a service from AT&T, I would have gladly stuck with a firmware REV to solve the problems...coure now, I'll never have to pay for phone software, so I'm okay with that too.

Deja vu

[Bilange]

"Crippled" cell phones seems to be common.

For example I bought a LG 5450 from Telus, but Telus blocks downloading tones/wallpapers off the net, forcing users to download off Telus website only.

When I asked about the phone-to-PC data cable, the vendor said it didnt exist, when in fact it does

Today, I use Bitpim to download/upload photos, ringtones, you name it, using this guide. Enjoy!

Give Credit Where Credit is Due

[syntap]

The OP links to this guy's blog where he has all the seem edit info, etc but give credit to all those who worked all of this out in the past year. These are frequent posters to howardforums.com and cellphonehacks.com. This guy was "standing on the shoulders of giants" for all of his info on hacking the v265. It's basically a repost of what others had already done through trial, error, and oopsies that fried their phones.

Re:Give Credit Where Credit is Due

[endeitzslash]

Also, motomodders.net is a good place for this kind of stuff.

For the forgetful...

[__aaitqo8496]

Same subject but different phone:

V710 Hacker Reward Program Unsuccessful

Verizon Crippled Bluetooth Features in Motorola V710

Not really.

[Transcendent]

Unfortunately, Verizon Wireless cripples their phones so that you have to use their fee-based service in order to add new ringtones, or to transfer the pictures you take with the camera.

Unfortunately, you can easily buy a data cable w/ software to hook up to your computer, which lets you transfer pictures, movies, ring tones, address book, etc. My friend and I use it on our samsung phones.

Re:Ridiculous!

[gkuz]

It's bad enough that phones are vendor-locked so you can't use whatever provider you want

Gee, I've been with T-Mobile since Omnipoint days, had like 4-5 phones in that time -- some bought from them, some bought via eBay -- and every single time I've asked nicely to have them remove vendor-lock, I've had no problem whatsoever. Used the phones with all sorts of pre-pay SIMs all over Europe. I can honestly say "vendor lock? what's that?"

Maybe you should just avoid VZW.

Re:OMGWTFBBQ

[Mr2001]

As for wallpaper, it's not bad if you've got a data cable (or built-in IR (like I've got) or Bluetooth), because it's free (unless the bastards at your phone company disabled it. Shenanigans like that are why I won't look at Verizon

Verizon doesn't disable that feature, at least not on all phones. The LG VX7000 I have now, and the LG VX4400 I had before it, can both transfer ringtones and wallpapers over the data cable for free. You don't even need to buy Verizon's cable; you can get one for $10 at Radio Shack or on eBay.

Re:Ridiculous!

[Algan]

I've got the same phone; I bought it while being fully aware of the crap that Verizon pulls. Luckily I'm not really affected by the limitations, I just use BT for handsfree operation and I'm not into crappy digital pictures (got a real camera for that). They do however have a decent network and 90% of my friends are on Verizon, so switching wasn't really an option for me.

Anyway, there is a workaround to the mp3 ringtone block. Apparently you can convert the mp3 to 32kbps, mono and email it to @vzwpix.net. When you get the message, save it as a ringtone. Voila, free (almost) mp3 ringtone. Some people find it helps if you rename it to .mid. I haven't tried it personally (just got a couple of tunes from a friend who did it - you can msg them from phone to phone). YMMV, use it at your own risk, blah blah all disclaimers apply... but let me know if it works for you :)

The verizon logo doesn't conceal my clock!

[compange]

"The Verizon logo conceals the date display on the main screen and covers over the top portion of the background"

If only people would spent 5 minutes looking at the options on their phone and not bitching. The verizon logo on the sub-screen is actually the name of the network you are on. Go out of area and it says "Extended Network." Their coverage is just so good you never see it. On my Audiovox phone I can turn it off too, and the text on the screen.

Menu->Settings->System->ERI Banner. Turn it off. No more "advertising."

Change the "greeting" message and yours too can say "Yes Sir?" or even nothing at all!

Thanks for playing. You failed.

Re:Corporate Silliness

[MightyMartian]

In order to maximize profits, you can't cut costs by disabling what's already there.

Been done for years. Old single-sided floppies were actually double-sided, but only one side was tested. Intel's 80486SX was an 80486 with the math coprocessor disabled (not sure of the explanation, though I suspect, like single-sided floppies, it was cheaper to test if you didn't have to worry about a large chunk of the circuitry).

Re:OMGWTFBBQ

[rsynnott]

If you've got proper internet access, of course, you can just download the things. Hmm, now I think of it, I run a small website that allows people to upload images to have them put into a format that a phone is happy with. Then they can download the new image. I get an abnormally low number of US users. Maybe this is why.