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

Corporate Silliness

[fembots]

Some call it Strategic Market Pricing and Positioning. Almost everybody's doing it, on things like digital cameras, DVD-writers, car engines, CPUs, MP3 players and games.

In order to cut cost, most manufactuers use obscurity as the only line of defence.

So will manufacturers be forced to have separate production lines for "Starter" and "Professional" products. Is it possible that one day when hacks are so common, manufactuers will find it cheaper (than losing the upper market sales) to have two lines so that they can price products for each market accordingly?

Re:Corporate Silliness

[black6host]

It would be interesting to know the percentage of equipment that is actually hacked. That would be a deciding factor as to as to whether or not it's worth it to incur the additional expense of re-tooling.

Re:Corporate Silliness

[arose]

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

Re:Corporate Silliness

[tomhudson]

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

Sure you can. Modem manufacturers used to do it all the time - 1 assembly line, 1 printed circuit board, etc., is cheaper than 2. Just cut a few traces and your 56k faxmodem is now a 33k modem w/o fax.

Same with software - it may be capable of n number of users at once, but its been crippled so that you need to buy licenses for each user.

Re:Corporate Silliness

[spuzzzzzzz]

You can't cut costs by disabling things, but you can increase profit:

Person A works a lot with CAD software and he can afford a NVidia Quadro 4000 or whatever it's called.

Person B wants to play DooM 3. He can't afford a Quadro, but he can afford a 6800 Ultra.

Now, it's cheaper for NVidia to make 2 Quadros than a Quadro and a GeForce 6800 because they only need 1 assembly line. If they try to charge person B the Quadro price for his card, he won't buy it. If they offer person B the Quadro for the Geforce price, person A would have no incentive to pay full price for his Quadro. So they disable a bunch of features in person B's Quadro before selling it to him as a Geforce 6800.

Re:Corporate Silliness

[jcgf]

I think he means that your overall costs would go down ie $56k + $33k > $56k + $(cut traces on the odd card). So it's like you have designs for two different pieces of hardware at the cost of one. Now whether or not it would be better for everyone if they would just sell the 56k at a decent price is another matter.

Re:Corporate Silliness

[Ucklak]

You can have a run of 10,000 PCB's.
The next 10,000 you cut a trace.
The next 10,000 you stamp a Compaq logo on it
etc...

Manufacturing is a cheap process when you're not doingg a 1-up. Same with printing

Re:Corporate Silliness

[DigiShaman]

How exactly does this cut costs? If anything, the 33k should be more expensive since it takes an extra step in the production process.

It's called market saturation. Take the CPU industry for example. While it may cost a few bucks more to fab a Pentium Extreme vs Celeron, you just destroyed your potential profit margin if both CPUs were priced nearly the same. In fact, some of newest "lowend" CPUs to come out of the fab are just UNDERCLOCKED CPUs rebranded.

The idea is to capture your profits at the high-end. Selling the low-end stuff at cost is just... tangible marketing.

Re:Corporate Silliness

[rsynnott]

And people continue to buy the phones?! Eek. There'd be war over here if they tried that. The closest thing I can think of to it is that on themable phones, vodafone includes their own theme as default; but it is easily changable.

Ridiculous!

[Linus Torvaalds]

Selling a device that is intentionally crippled is just plain ridiculous.

Yes it is. The only thing I can think of that is more ridiculous is buying it.

Seriously. If it's that big a deal, then don't buy the damn thing. There are other phones on the market you know. Vote with your dollars.

Re:Ridiculous!

[log0n]

Yes.

Yes yes yes.

I've got the Verizon Motorola V710. It's advertised as Mp3 playback.. mp3 ringtones.. Bluetooth for interaction and connectivity.. etc.

The Bluetooth is crippled so much that I hope that some Bluetooth org somewhere rescinds their right to use the trademark (nowhere did it mention in writing it's lack of functionality with comps, with other bluetooth devices, etc). After sending the phone in for repair (battery charging problems) the mp3 ringtone feature was disabled. When I first bought it it originally worked as expected - they performed a software update that removed the functionality. Additionally with the update, you can't play Mp3 files greater than 64kbits (so no real way of using it as a standalone mp3 player - you used to be able to play anything up to 320kbits, etc).

Fuck Verizon. The whole reason I bought the phone (and it was the best and MOST expensive phone out there for a while) was because it direct methods of interfacing with a computer without doing anything shady or sneaky. And it had awesome features. Corporate greed, more money, fuck em.

(Yeah, I'm pissed over it.)

Or

[UserChrisCanter4]

Of course, the only natural thing to do in a situation like this is to hack it."

[Obvious] Or, you know, not buy it. [/obvious]

Re:Or

[ThisIsFred]

You can't unbuy your contract when you're already signed. Well, you can, but you'll get screwed twice: Once by the false advertising, and again by early termination fees. I think that's part of the point here. The fellow above found that the product didn't work as advertised, and was further crippled by an update when he had it repaired for an entirely unrelated reason.

Re:OMGWTFBBQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Ringtones should be prohibitively expensive. Or, better, all phones should be crippled to not allow customized ringtones, period - except for a handful of pre-selected ones.

It's a phone. It's not a boombox. When your phone rings, it should... well.... ring. That Puddle of Mudd ringtone doesn't make you look hip or cool or interesting. And when you're in a business meeting or I hear your stupid 50-Cent ringtone from across the office ten times a day, I don't think you're cool. I think you're a fucking pretentious tool. Even moreso if you paid $2.99 for that 10 second song clip on your phone. In fact, the same thing goes if you have those stupid "cell phone covers/faces". Not to mention, if you're one of those assholes with the stupid wallpaper on their cell "desktop".

IT'S A PHONE. IT IS NOT A THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL'S TRAPPER-KEEPER.

V710

[matth]

This is nothing new.. I have a V710 from Verizon and have modified the firmware. Hack is a strong term and really isn't what is being done. It is my phone.. I purchased it under my contract. I chose to flash it with a firmware I wrote, and I take full responsibility for any technical issues I may have with it. I have not ripped Verizon off of any cost or services that (ie free minutes)..

Re:verizon TOS

[tomhudson]

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...

Bullshit - they *sold* him the phone. They didn't license it to him, they *sold* it. You buy the phone, and license the service. Also, they failed to mention that they had crippled it before he bought it. Seems to me that cell phone companies selling crippled phones without full disclosure merits an investigation by the local Attorney General and/or Consumer Protection office for fraud.

The only

[wowbagger]

... only natural thing to do in a situation like this is to hack it.

Of course, because we simply CANNOT do without our toys - we cannot simply REFUSE to buy phones that are crippled, and if there are no service providers who will allow you to get a phone that is not crippled to simply DO WITHOUT.

Because it is a LAW OF NATURE that we must CONSUME whatever toys we are told to CONSUME.

We simply cannot refuse - so we must hack.

YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. SUBMIT. CONSUME, AND REPRODUCE.

Personally, I'm thinking about ditching Verizon

[l0ungeb0y]

It may sound fickle, but the fact that Verizon likes to pretend that Windows is the only operating system in the world and they cripple Bluetooth to the point of uselessness makes me want to switch to another carrier.

I'm hesitant though, since I've been with Verizon so long, love the quality of customer service support and have no coverage issues at all.

But, seeing how they are willing to commit fraud by selling something pretending to be what it isn't i.e. calling it Bluetooth instead of CrippledBy VerizonToRapeYourWalletTooth -- there is currently a class action suite against them for that -- pisses me off to no end. And personally, I think speak volumes of their attitude torward both technology and their user base in general.

So I've heard T-Mobile dosn't jack their bluetooth phones...
Is this the case? Personally, I'm thinking about just waiting for the Apple/Motorola iPhone and switching to whatever carrier has that (if and when it does come out) since it is the phone most likely not to be fucked with by a greedy carrier and it should integrate seamlessly with my all Apple home network.

Any readers online who have words of praise for cell carriers in the SF Bay Area that offer quality coverage, reasonable customer service and serve bluetooth straight up with no feature lockdowns?

Re:verizon TOS

[j-turkey]

Also, they failed to mention that they had crippled it before he bought it.

I'll say right off that I'm totally conflicted by this. The phone-crippling stuff is bullshit. I hope that Verizon gets theirs, bigtime. That being said...there are two sides to this, and your argument has some holes.

I'm sure that he knew that his phone was crippled before he bought it. Who didn't know that Verizon crippled their equipment? It's pretty widespread knowledge, and there is a class-action lawsuit pending against VZW. Further, I believe that employees at Verizon stores are required to inform you of the 15-day trial period...if not, it's in writing. Did he have his phone for 15 days before he bothered to figure out that it didn't do what he wanted? I find it difficult to believe that he was ignorant, didn't read his license agreement, wasn't informed about the 15-day trial period, and didn't find out that his phone didn't do what he wanted until after that 15-day trial period. With the above being said, he doesn't have a right to diddly squat in this case. It's Verizon's network, and Verizon can do what they want with it. Since there is plenty of competition, he can take his business elsewhere.

Doesn't this whole thing stink of someone feeling like they deserve something from a company when they actually don't? Isn't the better thing for him to do is to take his business to a different provider?

Dialup? No problem

[Mr2001]

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

You can do this with Verizon too... as long as you're on an America's Choice plan, and your favorite ISP is Verizon. ;)

There's no extra fee, but it does use your minutes just like a regular phone call (so it's free between 9 PM and 6 AM, and all day Saturday, Sunday, and many holidays). Just connect the phone to your computer and make a dialup connection with the following info:

Number: #777 (spells PPP)
Username: <your 10 digit phone number>@vzw3g.com
Password: vzw

Presto, you're online. You may want to download the Venturi client, which will do some compression to make web browsing faster, but it's not required. As an added bonus, since you're using Verizon's 1xRTT network (packet data) instead of a regular circuit data connection, you'll probably get speeds of 60-80 kbps or higher, instead of the 14k or so you'd otherwise get with a cellular data call. (If you're outside the 1x coverage area, you can still connect at a slower speed, but the settings are different.)

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:OMGWTFBBQ

[_damnit_]

One of the few soapboxes I really stand on all the time is cell phones and fscking CDMA carriers' lock down on phones. I only use GSM phones. Period. If I get one free from the cell company, I unlock it ASAP. If it's disabled in some way, I either fix that or get rid of it. By staying with a GSM carrier, I leave my options open and I can buy whatever model I choose. I'm not limited by whatever selection Verizon or Sprint offers. I don't have to tell them which phone I'm using or pay them for ringtones.

Most people don't know that there is a difference or that Verizon continually screws them by disabling advertised features on most of their phones. I do my best to educate people, but it's only a few at a time. Don't use phones without SIM chips, or use a provider that screws you right up front.

Do they tell you up front what the phone cant do?

[jonwil]

If not, thats false and misleading advertising.
Although I dont know if thats illegal in america (I know its illegal here in australia)

The only thing to do in a situation like this

[pklong]

The only thing to do in a situation like this is to use another company to provide your cell phone service. If everyone who cared did, they would soon change their minds. Its all about the bottom line.