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Hacking the Motorola v265

Posted by timothy on from the desucking dept.

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."

6 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Corporate Silliness by fembots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    --
    Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
  2. Ridiculous! by Linus+Torvaalds · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Ridiculous! by log0n · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.)

  3. Re:OMGWTFBBQ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:verizon TOS by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion