This SUCKS!

[micp1480]

Droid X hits the market and you are locked into your contract for a few years. Want the new phone? Then you must fork up the hundreds of dollars it cost, which I don't have. I wish you can upgrade anytime. I am bummed.



MICP1480

 

[johnlgalt]

I personally would not upgrade to the DROID X if you like playing with root, ROMs and kernels.

DROID X's bootlaoder and the eFuse system basically make your phone a brick if you try ot alter the ROM.

 

[ashykat]

Droid X hits the market and you are locked into your contract for a few years. Want the new phone? Then you must fork up the hundreds of dollars it cost, which I don't have. I wish you can upgrade anytime. I am bummed.

So you think at any point in time Verizon should subsidize as many phones as you want? Doesn't make much sense. You could always pay full price and not be locked into a contract, or you could pay a bit more than the 2 year price and get a 1 year contract. Nobody forced you to sign a 2 year contract. I know it sucks to have yesterdays phone, but that's just the way it works. You could always sell your current phone on craigslist or ebay then apply what you get towards the full retail of the Droid X/whatever is the newest most amazing perfect phone.

 

[riffdex]

So you think at any point in time Verizon should subsidize as many phones as you want? Doesn't make much sense. You could always pay full price and not be locked into a contract, or you could pay a bit more than the 2 year price and get a 1 year contract. Nobody forced you to sign a 2 year contract. I know it sucks to have yesterdays phone, but that's just the way it works. You could always sell your current phone on craigslist or ebay then apply what you get towards the full retail of the Droid X/whatever is the newest most amazing perfect phone.

I don't think it's unreasonable that Verizon should reward it's customers by allowing us to upgrade more frequently than we currently are able to do without having to pay the full price for a new phone. Right now we have to wait too long to upgrade our phones (imo). Upgrade at any point without having to pay the full phone? No. Be able to upgrade more frequently at a discounted price? Yes, imo!

 

[xliderider]

I'm going to take a wild guess that you are under 24 years old.

 

[YankeeDudeL]

I understand the business end. Lot of people need to get paid for their work. But in all fairness to the OP, when I was on Suncom, I used to upgrade every year. I'd trade in my old phone and they'd give me up to half of the price of a new phone. They eventually got kinda screwy toward the end where you would get a $5 credit at the end of every month toward a new phone (IF you paid your bill on time). Of course, those also weren't smartphones I was getting, either.

But owning a Droid, I can honestly say that I'm not overly enamored w/ any phone currently on the market. I'm rooted, so I'm capable of just about anything anyone else is. It's a thing of beauty. It'll take that rumored dual-core processor Android phone Motorola has proposed at the end of this year to finally make me jealous.

 

[sooper_droid12]

You do know that $200 isn't the real price of the phone you currently own right? I would probably agree with you if you're talking about a 20-month contract, but at that point, that's just data charges covering the cost of the phone. At the end of the day, I appreciate these contracts because it ends up locking people like you who are finicky and want the latest in greatest from flooding stock/refurbished storerooms with perfectly fine devices because you got bored with it. If you really want the latest and greatest, fork out the $600 to pay for it full price then you don't have to worry about being "locked in" to a contract. But yeah, $200 isn't the real price of your device and 24-months is just the right amount of time to cover the costs for the device, all the infrastructure maintenance and whatever losses caused by end-users like you who chuck away phones because they're only a year old.

On another note, why would you want a DROID X. Aside from beautiful hardware, with the rumors/conjecture about being locked down (which by the way, is a feature of ALL DROID phones, including the HTC Incredible; me thinks this isn't Motorola's doing, but Verizon... after the DROID we thought VZW was renouncing its evil/lockdown ways, guess not!), but running MotoBlur skin, you're already condemning yourself to a more difficult time for rooting or even receiving the latest and greatest updates. I'll keep my vanilla Android DROID because there are no skins to get in the way of updates.

 

[milrtime83]

I don't think it's unreasonable that Verizon should reward it's customers by allowing us to upgrade more frequently than we currently are able to do without having to pay the full price for a new phone. Right now we have to wait too long to upgrade our phones (imo). Upgrade at any point without having to pay the full phone? No. Be able to upgrade more frequently at a discounted price? Yes, imo!

They do allow you to upgrade early. You can upgrade 20 months into a 2 year contract, or 10 months into a 1 year contract.

 

[ricksievers]

The droidx will be rooted, just give it time.

 

[twistedlim]

I don't see that much of a differnce in the x to get all worked up about. I just picked up a droid and I had an Incredible in the box and sent it back. Just not enough difference to justify the price. I will wait for something far better to come along.

 

[meekrab]

I'm going to take a wild guess that you are under 24 years old.

Hey now, I take personal offense to that

The droidx will be rooted, just give it time.

Could be a lot of time, though. Look into that efuse system they're implementing. It's like a Vchip against rooting. I have no doubt that we'll eventually find a way around it, but what was once hard just got that much more difficult.

In my opinion, the Droid will live in infamy as Verizon's first and probably only venture into something as close to open source as they will get. It's not secret that verizon does not want the original droid on their network anymore, it's too easily hacked and exploited. Hence these new security measures. Embrace the treasure that you have, because in the right hands, the hardware can still obliterate most anything out there.

 

[twistedlim]

In my opinion, the Droid will live in infamy as Verizon's first and probably only venture into something as close to open source as they will get. It's not secret that verizon does not want the original droid on their network anymore, it's too easily hacked and exploited. Hence these new security measures. Embrace the treasure that you have, because in the right hands, the hardware can still obliterate most anything out there.

I just don't know. They are still pushing them out the door at discounted price so they are not really hiding them. It seems like this community (and similar forums) are loaded with folks who have hacked the phone but I have yet to talk to anyone I see who has one that has made any mods to their phone, even some really tech geeky folks. I would venture to say that maybe 1% of the droids are rooted if you look at all of them out there. Not really enough for Motorola or Verizon to be concerned about. Heck the more they sell, the more $30 a month data fees they can collect, which is really where the money is. Just my opinion, I may be wrong...and often am

 

[BlueIce5249]

In my opinion, the Droid will live in infamy as Verizon's first and probably only venture into something as close to open source as they will get. It's not secret that verizon does not want the original droid on their network anymore, it's too easily hacked and exploited. Hence these new security measures. Embrace the treasure that you have, because in the right hands, the hardware can still obliterate most anything out there.

I'd mostly agree with this, but I think the manufacturers are just as annoyed with hackers as Verizon is. IMO if they just gave us options to use different skins or themes with the phone, 90% of the rooters wouldn't bother rooting.

 

[skilaufen]

This is just a thought but being that Verizon is a business and their main purpose for existance is to make their investors a profit I can see why they would lock there bootloader on these upcoming phones.

With the Droid X they are now charging $20.00 a month (the figure I thought I saw) for using it as a wireless hotspot. This can translate into a huge cash cow across millions of phones. Rooting allows one to wirelessly tether for free thereby eliminating the need to pay the $20.00. Based on all of the tethering thread I have read it doesn't seem Verizon is worried about individuals doing wired tethering so much as they are looking to profit on the wireless hotspot now that it is offered. I think the recent update to the D-inc that is coming allowing the wireless hotspot also supports that Verizon is looking towards this.

Of course how many people will root there phones to get the free wireless hotspot may be statisticlly insignificant and makes my theory pointless, but who knows.

 

[meekrab]

I just don't know. They are still pushing them out the door at discounted price so they are not really hiding them. It seems like this community (and similar forums) are loaded with folks who have hacked the phone but I have yet to talk to anyone I see who has one that has made any mods to their phone, even some really tech geeky folks. I would venture to say that maybe 1% of the droids are rooted if you look at all of them out there. Not really enough for Motorola or Verizon to be concerned about. Heck the more they sell, the more $30 a month data fees they can collect, which is really where the money is. Just my opinion, I may be wrong...and often am

I'd mostly agree with this, but I think the manufacturers are just as annoyed with hackers as Verizon is. IMO if they just gave us options to use different skins or themes with the phone, 90% of the rooters wouldn't bother rooting.

I guess I am pretty biased as a frequenter of the rooting forum. I think it's just the idea of an active hacking prevention device hardwired to the future verizon phones (not sure if they're on other carriers yet) that really irks me.

Speaking strictly numbers, though, even if only 1% of droid owners root their phones (which may actually be an overestimate, now that I think about it), and even fewer of those people tether their phones (which is obiovusly true), VZW still stands to lose a substantial sum in potential "hot-spot" monthly fees. If only a fraction of a percent of droid users actually paid the 30 dollars for mobile hot spot features, verizon could rake in several hundred thousand dollars over the lifetime of the contracts (and that's a very conservative estimate, based on less than 1000 users of the nearly 3 million paying the fee!).

 

[sooper_droid12]

Right now, the only other phone that has been this difficult to hack is the HTC Droid Incredible. Like I said, I think this is not a phone manufacturer decision as it is a carrier decision. We didn't think that VZW had lost the ability to be evil did we? The DROID spoiled us because it was open like it should be. But as VZW realized, they were losing money, particularly on the tethering position. With capable phones like the DInc and D-X, it wouldn't take much imagination for us to believe VZW said something like, "Hey, you know that e-Fuse chip you put in all your phones already? Let's crank that security up a notch. We'll either get them to pay for tethering or pay for unbricking their phones." At the end of the day, it's not Moto or HTC that's the non-compliant ones, it's VZW. Unfortunately, Moto and HTC get all the bad press.

 

[modestrock]

Dunno if you know this but upgrades aren't a right. They are carrots to keep us coming back for a new contract. I'd love to have a new phone more frequently but its just the way the business works out.

 

[potatolover1102]

Right now, the only other phone that has been this difficult to hack is the HTC Droid Incredible. Like I said, I think this is not a phone manufacturer decision as it is a carrier decision. We didn't think that VZW had lost the ability to be evil did we? The DROID spoiled us because it was open like it should be. But as VZW realized, they were losing money, particularly on the tethering position. With capable phones like the DInc and D-X, it wouldn't take much imagination for us to believe VZW said something like, "Hey, you know that e-Fuse chip you put in all your phones already? Let's crank that security up a notch. We'll either get them to pay for tethering or pay for unbricking their phones." At the end of the day, it's not Moto or HTC that's the non-compliant ones, it's VZW. Unfortunately, Moto and HTC get all the bad press.

Do evil? Are you serious? Not allowing a phone to hacked beyond what the already openness is not evil ESPECIALLY when they can lose money in the mean time. This is not how they used to throw the bloatware on and allow nothing else so you really have nothing to complain about as all android phones are more open than anything they have ever had and buy a phone that works for you and does not need to be hacked and changed to fit. Download themes and other things and if you need 1GHZ then buy one that has it and do not blame verizon for locking you out when they really are not doing this huge thing. Also the reason for now having hardware to block root is that people who root know how to restore to full stock and turn it in when it breaks so that verizon can not say your warranty was voided because they never know. This is another reason to disallow it at the hardware level. I am sorry for the rant but as a business you would never allow it either because it does you no good. Plus who is leaving Verizon in protest to never rooting again. Where would you go? Older phones with root and never upgrade on another carrier? Or the Iphone plz they are golden doing this.

 

[bemenaker]

I haven't followed this really closely, but did Verizon actually say they are going to start using the eFuse chip, or did someone just suddenly realize it was there, and make some WAG on a blog post that it was being used? The Droid has the eFuse in it, and it hasn't been used.

 

[GirLuvsDroid]

Apparently, Moto says that eFuse won't brick the phone: Motorola responds to Droid X bootloader controversy, says eFuse isn't there to break the phone -- Engadget

"eFuse will shut down a phone with an unapproved bootloader -- but it won't brick the phone, it just needs 'approved software' to be dropped back on there."
​

 

[jmt9779]

I personally would not upgrade to the DROID X if you like playing with root, ROMs and kernels.

DROID X's bootlaoder and the eFuse system basically make your phone a brick if you try ot alter the ROM.

Not exactly.

Motorola responds to Droid X bootloader controversy, says eFuse isn't there to break the phone -- Engadget

Edit: Girluvsdroid beat me to it. Didn't read the whole thread. Sorry.

 

[milrtime83]

It may not brick your phone, but the advice about not getting it if you like to play with roms is still valid. The milestone has been out for a while with a similar locked bootloader and still doesn't have the ability for custom roms.

 

[gwlaw99]

You can upgrade once a year, you just do not get the extra $30-50 off (based on the plan cost)for new every two , So instead of paying $150-$170 for a Droid X you pay $200.

 

[YankeeDudeL]

Ok, I'll veer off-topic to through in my two pennies.

I agree that the Droid is probably the last Verizon phone that'll be so completely open source. They wanna milk every customer of every last dollar they have, period. I have to fight almost every bill b/c of phantom charges and hidden fees. The fact that they're offering this whole mobile hotspot thing is just a way of capitalizing one what third-party devs have already figured out: tethering.

Now, are they going to throw away every Droid they have in stock to ensure that they completely eliminate this threat? No way. They're gonna sell them and make every last dollar they can off of it. The root community is such a small percentage of mobile users; we're not big enough of a threat for them to squander those sales. Besides, they know the majority of people will move on to the next big thing, regardless. This is a problem that'll work itself out, to them.

 

[Dark Jedi]

Droid X hits the market and you are locked into your contract for a few years. Want the new phone? Then you must fork up the hundreds of dollars it cost, which I don't have. I wish you can upgrade anytime. I am bummed.



MICP1480

you can upgrade at anytime but its going to cost you.

anyways just because its a new phone. doesnt mean its better. why make a phone that records in 720 and give it a hdmi output but keep the same non hd screen in the phone