Settlement Good News for MotorolaV710 Owners

bluebanzai writes "When hordes of people bought up the Motorola V710 upon its release a year ago, Slashdot readers may remember many impressive features including the cutting edge Bluetooth features (picture/mp3 transfer, wireless syncing) as described on Motorola's website. However, when used with the popular Verizon Wireless cell phone service provider, many Bluetooth features were sadly crippled (apart from a wireless headset) because OBEX features had been purposely disabled by Verizon. Hundreds of people donated to a hacker rewards program to unlock the full features of the phone to the tune of $3000, but was never fully successful. Well, one year later, the Los Angeles Superior Court (PDF Warning) and Verizon have announced the initial steps of a Class Action Lawsuit that appears to be influenced by the user community allowing everyone who bought it before the start of 2005 a few options for compensation--including a refund up to the purchase price of another phone which, interestingly enough, is a lot easier to hack."

Comments

Verizon is horrible about this

[fmwap]

Verizon has consistantly pissed me off since I got their service, they've killed Kannel on their network, upgraded to prevent hacking the GetItNow service, and the only way to add custom anything is to locate an impossible to find cable & hack it using BitPim

Sure, you CAN add custom photos and ringtones, which I might do if I had to pay ONCE for, but Verizon charges a monthly fee just for having them on your phone. It's a blatent ripoff and I got tired of being fucked by Verizon.

I don't have any input on them crippling bluetooth, but frankly it doesn't suprise me. This company is a shit providor and I don't understand why anyone has their service. I'm sure they will offer better Bluetooth enabled devices, with many new features, as long as you pay X amount per month to have them enabled, and a fee for using them, and the fee for airtime, and the activation fee, and ...