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."

Re:thats the problem with US phone networks

[ForestGrump]

Yes, GSM is getting a foothold in the US market. I myself have been with Cingular/ATT (both GSM) for almost 5 years now.

Like CDMA carriers, GSM isn't problem free.

For example, if you buy a GSM phone, it is most likely locked to the carrier you bought it from. Why do they do this? Because most phones are either "free" or "discountted" with the signing of a contract.

Now, I figure they lock phones for 3 purposes:
1. If your family member destroys their phone somehow, your "locked" phone won't work because they have a different carrier. Thus, they'll be forced to buy a new phone.
2. So you can pay their roaming/international charges when you travel (because a locally bought SIM doesn't work on the locked phone).
3. Profit!

Thankfully, unlock codes/reflashing can easily be done if you know where to find a code calculator, or willing to buy a $10 data cable.

Grump
Unlocked Siemens S40, Mot V400.
Unlocked half my family's nokia phones.

Re:CDMA and SIM card question

[tomreagan]

i realize that the current market is setup (with phone subsidies) so the carriers have incentive to keep you from using phones with another carrier.
but is there any technological barrier? is there any reason that cdma cell phones couldn't be paired with SIM cards?

no, there is no technological barrier. further, some people believe that the importance of supporting next-generation provisioning and wi-fi/3g roaming will lead more of the carriers to support gsm on their networks. you could easily support the gsm provisioning/billing/roaming features on top of a cdma transport. in fact, i believe that some cdma phones with gsm/tdma chipsets built-in for global roaming have been announced/discussed.

it will be interesting to see how long verizon can maintain this technological provincialism. based on their dominance in the marketplace, i would imagine they'll be able to maintain for some time.

Re:thats the problem with US phone networks

[Adlopa]

Well, that's not strictly true. In the UK, you have two choices -- 1) 'buy' a phone from a provider or 2) from the manufacturer. In the case of 1), phones are sold at much, much less than the manufacturer's RRP but you're forced to sign up to a 12 month contract with the provider. The phone is also locked to that provider and another provider's SIM won't work. Essentially, the phone's low cost is subsidised by your 12 month subscription. Once the contract is up, you can often get the provider to 'unlock' the phone for use with any provider's SIM for free or a small fee. Or, you can go to a back street unlocking shop at any time and pay around £10 for them to unlock it. With 2),you pay the full RRP, which is not inconsiderable for a mobile phone. The phone is free for use with any SIM though. Oh and most UK providers customise the phone's interface to suit their particular service, but I'm not aware of any case where features were disabled -- they're merely presented differently.

Re:I wish I was that lucky

[indytx]

But we all know that when North American cell phone providers aren't outright lying to their customers, they're crippling the phones they provide so that the only way to make use of all of the technology in the phone you buy is to pay outrageous fees.

This is both true AND inaccurate. It is true because you do get charged outrageous fees for ringtones, wallpapers, etc. However, it is inaccurate because, in Europe, callers pay to make phone calls to a mobile phone. Try calling a European mobile phone from the US. You'll be astounded just how expensive it is. Someone has to pay for all those fancy services. In Europe, it's the caller. Europeans can send SMS messages for 5-10 cents, and those cost nothing for them to receive.

If I call from Belgium with a French SIM card, I'm roaming. If I call to Belgium with a French SIM card, I pay more. Try comparing a service mape from a large, U.S. mobile provider to what is available in Europe. You'll be shocked. Also, European mobile carriers cannot bundle phones with mobile contracts.

It is simply different in the U.S. Americans can talk much more on their mobile phones because it is much more economical to do so. Most Americans would rather have cheap minutes than gee-whiz features that don't add much value to the average consumer. If you want the gee-whiz features, order a GSM phone, pay the full, unsubsidized price, and get a contract with Cingular. Case closed.

T-Mobile and Motorola

[qazwart]

I got my cell service from T-Mobile. Not only are they a GSM provider (and I can even get a phone from them that works outside of the U.S.), but they don't disable their Bluetooth at all.

I am fully able to transfer files back and forth between my computer and my Motorola RAZR phone. I even sync my addressbook between my phone and my computer (and it was one of the big reasons I went T-Mobile and bought this particular phone).

I bet you could probably go to Japan, get one of those ultra-cool phones they have there, then use it with T-Mobile in the U.S.

BTW, I think it is a very bad sign that the U.S. is no longer the first country to get the latest technilogical doodads. Heck, we're not even one of the first. A lot of the really high tech stuff never even hits the U.S. markets. Many tech firms are beginning to treat us like a third world market. It's not just cell phones, but video game consoles, and even watches.

Re:thats the problem with US phone networks

[Derlum]

Verizon has great coverage across the US, but for the technically inclined or anyone wanting "cutting edge," they're rarely the best choice, with outdated, locked phones and limited, expensive data capabilities.

    Not true at all. I work for a wireless engineering firm in the DC area and have done quite a bit of work with a wide range of cellular equipment from all carriers. Verizon's EV-DO data service with a burst max of 2.4Mbps is the absolute best available right now, period. It will likely continue to be so even after Cingular rolls out UMTS (burst max 2.3Mbps). Only when Cingular starts applying the system software upgrade to go to HSPDA (8-10Mbps) will they stand a chance of being the best mobile data service, but Verizon could easily be well on their way to EV-DV by then. And at $60/mo. for a service on which I've personally seen sustained data rates of 700-800kbps (at 80mph no less), I wouldn't call it expensive either. On top of that, Verizon's data service gives you an open public IP address, while Cingular firewalls their data customers without exception.
    Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put Verizon on a pedestal. They've got plenty of problems. I'm a v710 owner and the Bluetooth crippling issue is absolutely ridiculous. I fully intend to be a member of the class action settlement. But I wanted to clarify that poor choice of phones != bad service.

Re:This is still bogus...

[mr_rattles]

Syncing does work with the most recent firmware on the V710. With a small property file hack you can get syncing to work with iSync in OS X as well.

See this article:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050 501151747917 [macosxhints.com]

OBEX? Feh, Verizon disables Transfer from T-Flash!

[Dr. Ion]

First, the v710 never had OBEX support. Verizon never took it out, because it simply Wasn't There! There is no hack to enable it, because there is no OBEX code in the box. Their mistake, as explained in the lawsuit, was to mislead customers into thinking they would get something like OBEX. (Verizon does, however, disable Dial-Up Networking via Bluetooth.)

Most importantly, the latest version of the v710 software from Verizon disables the other free transport -- Transflash. You can no longer copy wallpaper and ringtones (or anything at all) from the flash card to the phone. You can't copy your own pictures from the phone internal memory to the card either!

Early v710 phones from Verizon did have this feature. In fact, it can be re-enabled by some well-published hacks. Highly Recommended.

The e815 phone, of course, does have OBEX which can be re-enabled through more well-published hacks.

Verizon also doesn't publish the more significant differences between the e815 and v710, listing only "VCast" as a feature.

• 40MB of memory vs 10MB
  
• Much faster processor
  
• Longer battery life (bigger capacity battery)
  
• Better keypad
  
• Nicer camera (1.3 vs 1.2MP, but also just better in general)
  
• OBEX can be re-enabled
  
• EvDO dial-up networking
  
• Bluetooth calendar/Contact sync
  
• Faster charger in the box.
  
• Missing belt-clip in the box (e815 charges $17 extra for the same clip)
  

Re:thats the problem with US phone networks

[SilverMane69]

Just a comment:

Only the major US carriers use "locked phones", smaller regional carriers can't afford to pay the manufacturers to lock their phones. (These fees also include the special logos, menus, and apps) So, if you purchase a GSM phone (CDMA is another story) from one of these small guys, odds are that it won't be sim locked. This means you can use it with any service provider. No hacks required. The only real drawback is that these small carriers don't always carry the latest tech due to cost. As for CDMA, I understand they are moving the tech towards using a chip similar to a SIM. Maybe one day you will be able to move from CDMA to GSM and back simply by swapping a chip.

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Re:thats the problem with US phone networks

[d99-sbr]

Stolen GSM phones can be locked globally through their IMEI number. However I would assume that most stolen phones are never reported. Additionally, at least some older phones allow this number to be changed.