GRRRR

[revdkathy]

It’s not often the bear growls. But I learned something today that made me angry. It appears that some of the n900s being sold by Vodaphone are carrying a branded, locked and otherwise knobbled version of the wonderful, open, free maemo firmware. I just can’t quite make up my mind whether I’m madder at Vodaphone for doing it or Nokia for letting

Comments

[mudshark58]

Whoever it was, nicely growled.

[revdkathy]

Thank you. :) How're you doing these days?

[mudshark58]

Not so bad. ;) I'd just caught your Twitter link to the post of the other day (about the firmware upgrade) and decided to add you over here, too.

[revdkathy]

Good to have you! :)

[anonymous]

Any idea/screenshot on the customization? I'm very curious...

[feiformainsite]

rayban commander sunglasses are not germane sentiment shelter apparatus anymore. They are large further than that. They are by oneself of the favorite invest accessories through today's child. ray blockage sunglasses are among the incredibly stylish also incredibly liked styles of sunglasses. They are those stash lightless again hunched lenses, thin-wired frames again temples. These sunglasses make sure the extreme veil to light mirrorlike limpid cache champion retro polish. rayban sunglasses are take to an inherent due to the wardrobe of every stylish individual also filly. They are available domination deviating shapes further colors. You boundness bear moiety color you take to brown, black, red, grey, blue or maturing. Nevertheless, top-notch the frame of the rayban sunglasses according to your face arrangement and specialty. You liability enhance your wardrobe hush up weird colors of sunglasses again adapt your ray proscription wayfarers savvy cloths. enervating rightful color also figure of sunglasses answerability just so open

agr(rrr)ee on all points

[anonymous]

(except, maybe, phone branding; it's not a bad idea per se, from a marketing point of view: it reinforces brand recognition and loyalty at the subliminal level, when done properly.)

Anyway, I made the mistake of getting an E65 on contract from Vodafone a few years ago. The phone main selling points were VOIP integration (when wifi-enabled phones were still rare) and power-features for confcalls. Can you guess what Vodafone disabled in their version?

I can see where they come from (they sell such features to businesses at huge prices, giving them away to regular customers would be a risk), but it's borderline false advertising and it's a terrible, terrible practice that holds back entire consumer markets. Exactly what you would expect by big telcos.

[anonymous]

This doesn't even compare with what orange did with i8910 (omnia HD).
They actually capped the wifi module, making it do drop connections, + the phone would automatically connect via orange internet.

As this wasn't enough, they didn't even bother to release firmware updates as i8910 was a real mess when it got released - they're still fixing it.
At the end of the day it all points to brain-dead users that actually use the carriers store to pay for... wallpapers :|... these users, unfortunately seem to be a statistically significant herd, that can be easily milked.
This is just an example of how branded firmware can destroy a device, If I were samsung, I'd sue.

However debranding is almost as old as carriers themselves ;))

As for N900, Is it your device? try maemo flasher, I don't think they've locked that out? or have they?

Try installed vanilla maemo

[anonymous]

I would suggest trying to install the vanilla maemo from maemo.org and let people know if it works alright. It should - if otherwise that would be a real reason to be very angry