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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."
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.
Verizon doesn't give me free ringtones? This is ridiculous!
The only sensible thing to do is hack it so I can listen to the latest shitty pop songs to their full glory.
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.
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]
that would seem like something that should have been mentioned...
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, and did I mention I got a bluetooth phone? Verizon Wireless appears to have only heard of bluetooth about 3 months ago, and they seem to have only a brushing acquaintance with that European phone maker, Nokia.
Unfortunately, T-mobile may be history pretty soon, and that likely means more consolidation and less competition in the U.S. mobile phone market.
What's the next best option? Cingular or Sprint? I hear terrible things about Sprint's service, and Cingular just merged with AT&T Wireless, which had a horrendous reputation for customer service.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Selling a device that is intentionally crippled is just plain ridiculous
Why is it so ridiculous? The company is only out to make some more money. They don't want anything but that. Some people just don't get the fact.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
Motorola Tools runs on windows. But as an employee of the Wirless provider that introduced the razor, I can say probably no. And the V3, while kinda neat looking, is mostly hype, does not do edge, and breaks if you look it. V551 is same phone, does edge, and cost less, and is pretty hardier.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
My V600 had a great deal of whackyness I couldn't get fixed (garbled external clock, occasionaly reboots, oh and fi you return your phone for a refurb with games on it you've had more than a few months...you're screwed.)
:
So Google 'hack v600' and there's a plethora of nifty things out there for it. The BIG stickler is: you've gotta get a REAL USB cable...my first one had a black box in the middle that converted usb on the PC side to the serial interface on the phone. You MUST have full USB to update the phone.
There are two (and a half) levels of updates for these phones; Flex, Flash, and Seems.
The Flex is similar to a firmware update in that is updates the low level internals of the phone. In doing so, I noticed improved reception, slightly better battery life, etc. I didn't wait long enough to see if that alone would fix my problems, I proceeded to
The Flash. Flash contains all the software that operates the phone. For awhile, I played around with a European software set that had a ROCKIN version of Monopoly (trust me, that's not a dichotomy of terms) It's major problem was a lack of american GPRS support. So I had a more stable phone, with some tnifty new features, but I couldn't surf the web using bluetooth on the busride.
I then found an american Flash that did what I needed it too. I still had to enter the defaults from mMode, and SMS stuff (luckily I had the wife's phone to refer to), but it did a pretty good job of squashing the bugs in the native AT&T Flash...
Which brings up an important point: the OEM flash is NOT backup-able, nor is it available via the usual suspects. So when you jump, you jump with both feet and no net. It turned out okay in the end (after I got the internet connectivity stuff worked out) but it's somethign to be aware of. If you're REALLY stuck on it saying AT&T, don't update your phone.
One of the mods allows for uploading java apps from the desktop (A procedure usually masked off by the cellphone carriers...they want YOU to pay THEM for this stuff) So I managed to get that european version of Monopoly back.
Seems are patches to a Flex that enable, disable, of modify behavior. I haven't tried them, and haven't yet seen the need to.
Lastly: While this has been v600 specific, the vXXX series of phones (6XX 5XX and 4XX at the very least) all support these flex/flash combos. so a cheaper phone can pick up the multimedia apps and some items available on the more expensive bretheren. (except where hardware limitations prevent it...face it, if bluetooth isn't on the motherboard, you can't turn it on via software)
It kinda bugs me that this wasn't available as a service from AT&T, I would have gladly stuck with a firmware REV to solve the problems...coure now, I'll never have to pay for phone software, so I'm okay with that too.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
http://www.cellphonehacks.com/
nuff said.
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.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The OP links to this guy's blog where he has all the seem edit info, etc but give credit to all those who worked all of this out in the past year. These are frequent posters to howardforums.com and cellphonehacks.com. This guy was "standing on the shoulders of giants" for all of his info on hacking the v265. It's basically a repost of what others had already done through trial, error, and oopsies that fried their phones.
Same subject but different phone:
V710 Hacker Reward Program Unsuccessful
Verizon Crippled Bluetooth Features in Motorola V710
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.
Unfortunately, you can easily buy a data cable w/ software to hook up to your computer, which lets you transfer pictures, movies, ring tones, address book, etc. My friend and I use it on our samsung phones.
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
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.)
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
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