May 23, 2006

• Damn you Verizon

  Well, I was going to write a post about what I did this weekend (going to the Apple store opening at 2 in the morning with Jon and Dave,
  eating at the street fair on 9th ave, playing basketball with several coworkers
  and some ghetto kids near my apt, going undefeated in beer pong with
  Dave), accompanied
  by pictures from my new Razr V3c.  Unfortunately, Verizon
  Wireless’ evil policies
  have made this impossible for the time being, so I’ll
  just talk about how lame Verizon is instead.

  It all stems from the fact that Verizon willfully disables perfectly
  good features on their phones so that they can leech more money out of
  their customers’ bank accounts.  I was aware of this when I
  ordered my phone… I knew that the Verizon firmware disables Bluetooth
  OBEX (a way of transferring data) on the Motorola-made V3c while
  simultaneously replacing Motorola’s UI with an inferior,
  battery-draining interface.  Verizon even forces Motorola to
  cripple its own phone software tool (Mobile PhoneTools) by disabling
  all data transfers between your phone and your computer… just when
  your phone is provided by Verizon. 

  Why would Verizon do a crazy thing like crippling their own phones, you
  ask?  They realized that they could extract a lot more money from
  their customers by making it impossible for you to get pictures and
  videos off of their phones unless you send them via MMS for 25 cents a
  pop.  You also can’t transfer wallpapers and ringtones to their
  phones without paying even higher fees.

  What makes these offenses even more egregious is that in the original
  version of Verizon’s V3c firmware, Bluetooth worked just fine. 
  Verizon went out of its way to take away this feature… it’s pretty
  sad when a company’s software “upgrade” turns out to be a considerable
  downgrade.

  Now you may wonder why I would get this phone knowing of Verizon’s evil
  schemes.  I could have gotten the previous version of the Razr
  from Cingular or T-mobile and have a phone that actually works right
  off the bat.  However, I wanted the new one for its better camera
  and expanded memory.  The V3c camera has 1.3 megapixels compared
  to the original’s 0.3.  I don’t want to carry a bag around with me
  everywhere, I can’t fit a camera into my already
  wallet/ipod/phone-filled pockets, and 1.3 mp is good enough for my
  needs, so there ya go.

  Fortunately, because other providers (namely Alltel) carry the V3c,
  it’s possible to change the firmware on it (aka “flashing” your phone)
  to their version and restore your phone to it’s original glory, from a
  time before Verizon got their dirty hands on it.  However, this
  isn’t very easy and involves downloading about 8 different programs to
  get everything working again, and some things may end up not even
  working at all.  The other option is to simply download the
  original, bluetooth-enabled version of Verizon’s firmware and flash
  your phone to that… you still get stuck with Verizon’s UI
  though.  Anyway, rereading the first paragraph of this post should
  imply which option I decided to try first.

  • 2:18 am
  • 9 Comments