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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."
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).
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