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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."
Kinda like what Nvidia does with the Geforce and Quatro lines?
Intel and AMD actually did that in the Celeron Mendocino and the Duron pre-Applebred days - the Mendocino and Morgan cores were actually developed specifically for the budget chips.
Intel had tried to use a regular P2 missing the (external) cache, made on the same production line, for the Celeron (Covington), but that was a real dog. Now, of course, they use the broken Pentium (3/4/M) cores to make a Celeron (D in the case of some P4s, M in the case of P-Ms).
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 (even though EVERYONE I know is either on it, or planning to go on it, and won't be stopped, so I can only call them on THEIR nights & weekends for it to be free for both). I'm on Sprint, FWIW.)
As for ringtones, I use a stock tone (not a ring, though). You see, it's for phone identification. I wouldn't EVER pay money for a tone. However, I'll never use the default tone, or a ring - that's what causes everyone to check their phones.
Faceplates, though? That's idiotic.
The problem with this is, at least on my phone, all the default ringtones are shitty. Why can't they just provide a ringing phone ringtone? I have my phone permanently on vibrate, and that's the way it stays because I'm so fucking sick of the ringtone selection.
Scary thing, no there aren't. Very few phones are completely wide open and allow you full access to all features. Even things like the Treo 650 have crippled Bluetooth.
The problem here is that a cellular/smart phone becomes more and more a vital piece of technology. And there are almost no choices that suit the geek who isn't loaded with cash. Vote with your dollars. Get the cheapest cheapest shit plan that they barely proft off of. Then hack the phone to bits. Maybe one day they'll realize that they're losing money by ignoring an important market segment.
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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, but we're realistically talking about a coverage area that's only beneficial to uber-travellers. For the majority of us who aren't constantly travelling, their rate plans are nowhere near as good as most competitors, 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?
I sure hope T-Mobile hangs in there. They were the only major carrier willing to do a family plan with different area codes (a Godsend when both my brother and I were at different colleges), and their rate plans have generally been pretty reasonable.
My only recommendation if they go under would be Cingular, if only because of the GSM factor. Even though Sprint and Verizon's CDMA is technically better in almost every respect, I've typically found the handsets to be of lower quality (particularly the Korean ones). Also, the absence of a SIM-style system for storing phone numbers boggles my mind - I still crack up when I see people writing down every number in their phonebook when they're upgrading/replacing a phone.
Nothing like an anonymous coward deciding what we should and shouldn't want. . . . Too bad you didn't leave your email address so that we can all ask you for advice about how to run our lives.
FYI: In order to get a plain old ''phone ringing" ring tone on my phone, I had to download it and install it on my computer. At least the bluetooth wasn't crippled. (And MAN, it was hard finding an mp3 file of an old fashioned phone ringing that didn't totally suck.)
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
Seriously. If you buy it, and then hack it, Verizon will (at best) think it's ok to sell crippled phones or (at worst) use the DMCA to send your "cyber-terrorist" ass to Guantanamo.
If instead you go to a Verizon store, return your phone, cancel your service, and say "Sorry, I'm switching to {Cingular|Sprint|T-Mobile|any other provider that doesn't cripple phones} because I feel consumers shouldn't get screwed" then maybe, just maybe they'll get the message. It's bad enough that phones are vendor-locked so you can't use whatever provider you want - there's no need to send a message to the CEOs that it's ok to screw over consumers to increase profits.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Cell phones are becoming shabbier and shabbier these days in some ways, but they're also becoming ridiculously complex. Despite obvious setbacks such as exploding batteries and other notions described in this article, cell phones appear to be coming to a fairly interesting state. Modern cell-phones have all the nuances of multimedia integrated into them, along with the inherent ability to talk with other people (which cell phones were designed for originally). However, multimedia has probably contributed slightly to the cell phone's downfall a mite, adding bugs and new features to maintain. Naturally, with all those cool features like camera phones and such, no one shall notice that ring tones are not included; this is despite the fact that they indicate one of the phone's primary functions (receiving calls).
http://www.cellphonehacks.com/
nuff said.
I've been waiting for a cheap phone that will play mp3s. I don't need a hard-drive iPod phone, I just always have my phone with me, it has a earphone jack, and it has multi-megabyte memory, So why don't they include MP3 playing capability on cheap cell phones? Fsck ringtones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
actually most people get the phone with the service plan and not independently. That is why in the US we get phones for free or for next to nothing and outside they have to actually pay. In all liklihood, he does not own the phone until the completion of his contract. Haven't you noticed that if you sign up for a longer contract, you will get the phone for less.
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This article on forbes indicates that the whole thing about selling it was likely fabricated.
While Deutsche Telekom spokespersons refused to comment on a report they termed "pure speculation," high-ranking company officials told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung they were convinced the report in the Wall Street Journal Europe was fabricated.
They told the newspaper they believed certain elements in the U.S. financial sector were interested in "disrupting Telekom and its U.S. investments."
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.
This might be true for a few specific phones, but not in general.
I recently got an LG VX7000, which is a camera/video phone. Verizon naturally wants me to use their services to purchase ringtones and wallpapers and to retrieve the photos and videos I capture, but with BitPim and a simple USB cable ($10 on eBay), I can transfer all the pictures, ringers, and videos I want to and from the phone. Verizon even sells a cable as part of their Mobile Office kit.
Now, if only I could develop my own BREW applications...
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I have a story regarding the new Motorola v551 phone that I "bought" from a Rogers Wireless store in Toronto. To get the phone at a decent price, you sign up for a contract that lasts 2 or 3 years. I picked the 2 year contract, paid a little extra, and brought my phone home. It's GSM, so my phonebook was intact as soon as I popped the sim card in from my old Rogers phone.
..well, that's exactly what this was -- literally!
;)
Within a few weeks, I wanted to go overseas and use my cell phone over there. Rogers in Canada charges nearly $3.00 a minute for any international calls (roaming + international) which was completely unacceptable. So, I picked up a Euro sim card that works in France from a friendly vendor in Chinatown (College and Spadina), and all looked well; the sim card gave me a France phone number, unlimited incoming calls as long as I was in France, and a killer per-minute rate on one of the Euro networks (Vodaphone, O2, etc). And the sim was pay-as-you-go, with the ability to top it up from almost anywhere (including online).
I popped the new sim and turned the phone on, and I wasn't surprised that it said "Please enter subsidy code." I phoned up Rogers and asked them politely for the subsidy code. They basically told me to fuck off and use their contracted providers over in Europe at $3.00/min incoming and outgoing. You know that saying.. "they get you coming and they get you going?"
The key point is that they sold me my phone at a loss. It's a RAZR V3 without the flimsy packaging and edge capabilities that actually work. I paid $150, and they said the phone was worth much, much more than that. That little word "subsidy" means exactly what it means, and they want you locked to their network until the end of time (if they had it their way).
Luckily, I live in Toronto. So, I walked back to Chinatown and found someone who unlocks cell phones for $40. I haggled and got the service down to $30. 5 seconds is all it took to unlock my v551 and it didn't even need a sim card installed to do it. A cable was plugged in at the bottom of the phone, a button was pressed on an external 'black box', a green light came on next to the button, the phone was powered on, and that was it.
The point of all this? That's real hacking right there. The guy/gal or guys/gals who worked on that bootstrap code to remove the subsidy lock on my v551 without even needing to know the firmware revision my phone was at.. now they deserve an article on Slashdot.
I used my unlocked phone in France without a problem. My phone is now worth whatever they're going for on eBay in an unlocked configration (more than $150 CDN that's for sure). I saved a lot of money by not paying Rogers their international rates.
Just because a cell provider wants to cripple your phone, lock it up, and sell it to you at a loss.. doesn't mean that you can't have someone unlock it, load a better firmware on it, and set you up with the cable you need to transfer your photos and contacts off of it.
I love the stuff that comes out of Russia sometimes
Here's the story of what Verizon did to the v710: http://www.canyouhearusnow.net/v710/v710story.php
Direct quote:
Your wireless phone is any device you use to receive our wireless voice or data service. It must comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations and be compatible with our network and your calling plan.
And if the contract states that you won't use Verizon's services with any phone running non-Verizon-authorized firmware, what then?
I don't know, maybe the Verizon firmware police will confiscate your phone after using their firmware-detecting machine? The customer agreement linked above has no mention of Verizon-authorized firmware. It says it only must be compatible with Verizon's network and your calling plan.
Unless they had intended to charge you for custom ringtones or something silly like that...
When you purchase a phone, it becomes your private property... they *sell* it to you, at a reduced price, and you also sign a contract tying you to the SERVICE. The phone however, is not theirs. You're allowed to modify the software on it all you want. So if these nonexistant contract stipulations existed, it's still not their phone.
I'm sympathetic that the stuff that they do charge for is often bullshit. But that doesn't mean that you should have the "right" to circumvent what you've contractually obligated yourself to follow.
There is no contractual obligations here and no circumventing of them.
It's one thing if they really did sell you the device outright, and sold you service on their networks with no stipulations about what you could do to the software running on your phone.
They did sell the device outright! The device is yours; the contract you sign for 1-2 years is in exchange for a reduced price on the phone. They allow you to do whatever you want. They *sold* you the phone. It's *yours*. The contract only locks you to their service. If you cancel the contract after the first 15 days, you keep the phone and pay the early termination fee (before 15 days, you return it and pay no fee.)
But if you don't like the terms of the contract, you don't have to accept them. If enough people felt like you, and actually did something about it and refused to do business with companies that offered shitty ToS, and told them so, there'd be a market for products that did not come with shitty ToS strings attached. I don't see anything in Verizon's ToS that's nonstandard or not to be expected from any large corporation. The problem is not with Verizon's ToS, but with the phones they sell.
It is extremely difficult/impossible to enter the nationwide wireless market without reselling, so there's not going to be some new nerd-friendly service launching.
Also, there are other choices that don't limit their phones down so much. Cingular and T-Mobile sell GSM phones without any limits on what you can do (besides the subsidy lock); if you don't like their phones, you can use any other compatible GSM device. Sprint's phones aren't nearly as limited...
Look at Speakeasy as an example of an ISP who respects what geeky customers want, or Google as a web services company that by and large does things right -- this isn't just some idealistic pipedream, it is a reality and can be for more products if we stand up and make ourselves heard, instead of being whores for the lowest-priced goods and services available, without regard to the other intangible costs.
Speakeasy fills a niche market. Otherwise, SBC and Verizon have a much larger DSL marketshare. I still don't understand what the huge attraction to Google is all about: good search engine, otherwise I don't care. If you want to stand up and make yourself heard while making up things about large corporations, you'll only make yourself look stupid. There have been and still are mobile companies that don't do this to customers. Verizon has never been the only choice.
I spent about 20 minutes poking around on Google and have come to the conclusion that most of the unlocking and modding tools for cell phones are very hard to find. My searching turned up, for the most part, people in Russia trying to sell collections of cell phone hacking utils.
So, what's the deal? Are these tools illegal to possess and that's why they are hard to find? Or, is it simply a matter of too much demand and too little bandwidth?
No, it's not a trapper keeper, but it is a small computer.
Do you really like looking at corporate logos everytime you go to use your phone? I don't, and I really don't care for the craptacular "nature" shots that come stock on many phones.
And to be honest I always keep my phone on vibrate, standard rings annoy me, and very few people seem to really share musical interests (especially mine), so I'd rather just save everyone some trouble.
As far as faceplates/faces/covers, why don't you badmouth people who mod thier computers? Enough said...
Hell has obviously frozen over, +5 on a post promoting RESTRICTIONS ontechnology!?
By now you should have guessed...I'm your magic negro.
When bluetooth works, it's actually kind of neat. But it breaks so much that I am impressed when it works at all. I have four bluetooth devices - an Acer laptop, a Sony-Ericsson T610, a Motorola wireless headset and a iPaq 4150. Bluetooth for each of those devices (except the headset) is buried under 4 or 5 nested menus. The bluetooth software on the iPaq & Acer is also extremely fragile. I actually feel that I have been blessed when I manage to get them to talk to each other without problems.
More often than not, the devices can be right beside each other and they still don't work properly. Or a device crashes. Or if it does work I can detect (for example) my headset, but the PC / iPaq can't use it as a device even though it would be fantastic for Skype.
I don't know much about the organization behind the bluetooth 'standard' but my feeling is they should be cracking the whip. Halfassed and crippled implementations are killing it. The 'standard' could more accurately be called 'pot luck' and its doing the technology no favours at all.