Settlement Good News for MotorolaV710 Owners 210
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."
The REAL winners (Score:3, Interesting)
are the lawyers with (fta) 6.3 million dollars + 60k expenses
seems everyday to a lawyer is like winning the lottery except you win every time !
now all they need to decide is which to buy , a speedboat or a Lear jet..hmmmm decisions decisions
Verizon is horrible about this (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:thats the problem with US phone networks (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, it's great to see them getting their due. Their attempt to lock up basic features in the US market is ridiculous, and hopefully this practice will end soon.
Fix the Blackberry please (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard that RIM did this because of security implications; maybe so. But it said Bluetooth on the box, not partial Bluetooth.
Nice, weak microphone addressed by Lameware cool (Score:3, Interesting)
The complaint was personally confirmed as a common grief experienced by V710 Verizon phone users.
The solution which did not work was to reset the phone using the stencil.
Glad I'll be able to get something for the piece of junk.
I stopped using the phone about 6 months ago due the bad microphone sound quality.
I would pick the 3rd option on the claim form. I hope they offer a phone of equivalent function and price/value.
The first claim form option was for $25 which in no way near covers the $430 cost of the junk phone.
Another complaint is that when I purchased a replacement, Verizon had no way of transferring Contact phone #'s to another phone.
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Avian flu dosen't kill people, people kill people.
This is still bogus... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also,with regards to EVDO, they SHOULD allow you to plug the card into that switch unit(forget the name of it). IF Verizon did this, then some people just might use this as thier ONLY connection to the web. When at home, plug it into the switch, when on the road, take another switch or just plug it into the laptop. Verizon could make TONS of cash if they were to do this, however they want to FORCE you to do things their way because they are afraid the network may not be able to handle it or some other stupid reason.
I wish I was that lucky (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I get back, read up on providers and such. I eventually decided that Virgin Mobile worked best for me, since I don't use my cell phone a whole lot but do find it a useful gadget. Their rates are pretty good for people who don't need to use their cell phones every day.
Now, here's where I screwed up: I did a Google for "Virgin Mobile" to see what kind of features the plan offered. This of course brought up the Virgin Mobile USA website. I live in Canada. There's no obvious indication on the site that it's the Virgin Mobile USA site, so I figured it was just a general Virgin Mobile site. These days most corporate sites redirect you to the appropriate page based on where your IP is located anyway, right?
So I'm looking at the features and I see that they have internet access and instant messenger support, among other things. So I go out and buy a phone (Audiovox CDM8910). Not a top of the line model, but it's got a camera, superphonic ringtones, and all that. Pretty nice, I think.
Of course, to my horror, when I open the package there is no data cable. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Instead, I discover, Virgin wants me to pay 50 cents per picture to get my pictures off of the phone, up to $4 per ringtone to download new ringtones (normally I wouldn't mind, but the phone's default selection is pathetic - none of them are suitable for anything, really), and up to $2 per picture to download new "wallpapers." Yeah right!
It is possible to purchase a data cable for this phone, and I've done so. The problem is that there's no software that really supports the phone, and of course the phone's firmware is completely undocumented... so I CAN get my pictures and upload new ringtones without paying Virgin's outrageous fees, but because of the shoddy, undocumented firmware, there's a good chance I could completely wreck my phone in the process. I doubt I'd have an easy time of getting a replacement, either...
Honestly, the cell phone market in North America is absolutely pathetic. I'm sick of being locked in by providers and being promised features that I don't receive. To be fair, I should have been more careful about my research in this case, but I'm sure several Slashdotters have experienced similar letdowns with cell phones. A lot of people seemed to think that the "Cell Phone User's Bill of Rights" was ridiculous. Maybe it was. 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.
Re:Cutting edge? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sue T-Mobile too! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fix the Blackberry please (Score:3, Interesting)
and yes, of course things like OBEX are better fits than the mouse profile. but "bluetooth" does not inherently imply any given set of profiles. if you wanted a specific capability, you should have asked for it, or bought a product specifically labeled to have it.
Re:Verizon is horrible about this (Score:3, Interesting)
We're talking about keeping an image you created on your screen. It's not like they're providing new images, installing images, or changing even a single bit in any way as they take your fee every month. Not deleting data that you don't own off of a device that you don't own for a fee is extortion.
Or do you think that paying "protection money" to the guy who cleans the trash out of the alley behind your business in order to continue to have windows that are in one piece is "subscription" too?
Re:The MONOPOLY industry. (Score:3, Interesting)
I would say you're the one with the free market, my friend. I've been saying it for years..."a free market is a regulated market" (but not necessarily the reverse case).
Case in point? The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) which regulates our stock markets. You would never have gotten the general public investing in the stock market like it does today without an oversight committee to prevent the abuses of the 19th & early 20th centuries. Yes, you get an Enron or Worldcom now and then, but a long time ago, you'd never get the transparency that you get today to find those problems in the first place.
Re:thats the problem with US phone networks (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had one for a few months now, and I'm at least as disappointed with it as my buddy is with his Verizon V710. First, and most on-topic with this discussion, the bluetooth stack is incredibly buggy! If I try to use OBEX to browse its files, I can sometimes get files in and out of the phone, and sometimes not. And virtually any time I use OBEX or connect from any Windows XP machine (three different machines, three different manufacturer's Bluetooth devices) the Bluetooth on the phone goes south, and it will refuse to even acknowledge a headset afterwards. I need to pull and replace the battery to get it to come back.
And my complaints go much further. The phone does not support OBEX browsing of other phones (like my Sony-Ericsson T637 could do.) It does not support 24/7 discoverability, restricting it to 60 seconds max. It does not support an "advanced headset profile" (again like the T637) where it doesn't establish the Bluetooth headset connection until a call is made, allowing me to use Bluetooth networking even in the presence of a powered up headset. That's a very important feature with a hands-free car kit. Overall, bluetooth functionality on this phone is on a par with the V710 - a lot of promise, but nothing delivered.
And then it suffers from all the other endemic Motorola problems. It has the world's worst address book application, which cannot handle the simple task of storing multiple numbers per contact, instead creating new contacts for each number. It also suffers from a byzantine one-touch speed dial reconfiguration mechanism. Their whole speed dial thing is still based on the "order" in which numbers are stored, so if you want to change speed dials you have to first renumber the old record, then renumber the new record into its place. And it takes it about a minute to boot -- I have no idea what can be taking it so long. Finally, even though the phone is perfectly capable of shooting video, (there are mods to turn it on) it's not available out of the box.
There are some really good features on the phone though that I do like: battery life is very, very good. Audio quality is excellent. The camera is a crisp 640x480. Voice dial recognition has impressive performance, especially in the noisy environment of my car using the handsfree kit. And of course it's small and light. But overall, it's far short of a "great" phone. I was much happier with my T637.