[aprssig] New Cell Phone

[Rich Garcia]

Verizon just announced that they will now be allowing "outside" products to
be run on the network. So if anyone has an interest in purchasing a phone or
special device (alarm monitor box, desktop house phone etc.)that works on
the network and activate it on the system they can not. I am not sure if
this process is in place yet but it it was announced about 2 weeks ago. I am
eyeing up a small box the size of a pack of cigrattes that has a Ethernet
port on one side and antenna connector on the other. Instant dedicated
broadband service anywhere you have EVDO coverage!

There are a lot of products out there but do remember to make sure you know
what your local system uses before you go out buying anything. There is 800
Mhz, 1.9 GHz, CDMA, TDMA, GSM, dual band, tri mode etc. etc. Also keep in
mind that just because your home system is "x" band if you go roaming on
vacation and want to take your product with you it may not work if they use
"y" band somewhere else. All carriers do not use the same frequency (and in
some cases mode) everywhere they provide coverage or roaming agreements.

-----Original Message-----
From: aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org
[mailto:aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org]On Behalf Of Stephen H. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 5:52 PM
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [aprssig] New Cell Phone

SNIP>>>
It's probably typical carrier "lock-in" where the cell carrier disables
many features the mfr put into the the phone, so they can force you to
buy ring tones from them.  Or force you to burn expensive air time
getting pics out of the camera.  The Q is a Motorola device. There are
numerous sites on the Web dedicated to unlocking Moto phones and
re-enabling features such as advanced Bluetooth access, local
"sideloading" of photos and ringtones (i.e. directly up/downloading this
stuff to your local computer via USB or Bluetooth.), etc.   One with a
ton of info and downloadable phone hack utilities is:

     <http://mark.cdmaforums.com/>



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