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Settlement Good News for MotorolaV710 Owners

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the sometimes-the-good-guys-win dept.

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."

5 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. How about... by aussie_a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    including a refund up to the purchase price of another phone which, interestingly enough, is a lot easier to hack.

    How about Verizon just stop crippling their customers and unlock the locked features?

    1. Re:How about... by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Funny
      How about Verizon just stop crippling their customers and unlock the locked features?

      If they did that, then you could easily create your own wallpapers and mp3 ringtones on your PC and transfer them to your telephone by Bluetooth. This is obviously wrong, and the sort of thing only pirates would do. Therefore the phone company locks down the features, and you can then pay a modest sum of money for professionally-created multimedia products of much better quality. Isn't the Company great, looking out for you like that?

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    2. Re:How about... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny
      How about Verizon just stop crippling their customers and unlock the locked features?

      They don't just cripple the phones, they also cripple their customers? I didn't know that they are that bad ... :-)
      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  2. thats the problem with US phone networks by riflemann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This seems to be a unique problem to US mobile phone markets. Why the hell do they require the phone company's own phone?

    In any other part of the world, you buy your own phone from wherever you choose (even another country) and just plug in a sim card from your chosen provider and it just works.

    If any provier here tried to pull those tricks, the market would take care of the problem very quickly.

    Is GSM actually getting any foothold in the US market?

    --
    Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
  3. Verizon is horrible about this by fmwap · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 ...