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.

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: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.

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.

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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