Verizon reverting to old paterns I thought were long gone

sergey said:

I think this is Verizon's attempt to be more than just a "dumb pipe". For years, they were the boss. Wanna download a pic? Pay us. Want navigation? Pay us. Want to press the button "1" duringi peak hours? Pay us.

With Android being open, and sharing all that free love and peace, it's almost like the perfect marketing ploy. They can go to consumers wanting choice. We're free! We're not nazis like Apple! Mr. Schmidt, tear down this wall! And the consumers bought into it.

But Android can go to the big boys wanting money- the networks, handset manufacturers. They can say, Fed up with Apple? Be free! Use Android, do as you wish with it. They can add a new UI, change search engines, add bloatware, replace the free Google apps with their own pay as you go apps. So they see it as a profitable alternative to Apple.

The bottom line is that somebody's gotta get paid. Whether it's the handset company, the network, developers, or all three. Our phones are profit machines. Those early, heady idealistic days of waxing poetic about the openness and freedom of Android was a bit of a farce. It's about money, plain and simple.

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Of course, but it's like that Engadget article that dreadnatty posted a few posts up. The carriers are exploiting Android. I'm fine if you want to sell the damn device at a profit. You want to make a Google Experience version of the Fascinate and sell it for $250 like the Epic is? Fine, make the money that way. Don't go degrading the user experience for everyone. I'd rather pay $250 for a $200 experience than $200 for a free-with-contract feature-phone experience if that's what it has to come to.

Better yet, you can sell the Fascinate just the way it is right now, but unlock the bootloader. That way, you make your money off your deal with Microsoft and those that have root can use custom ROMs compiled from AOSP. What is the advantage of denying us root? At least with the Droid, you just cannot brick the phone by rooting. Again, it comes to the fact that they want to charge you $30/mo extra for tethering.

Thornfullessrose said:

Why do people keep saying they are going to iphone on at&t? you're only gonna be even more locked down from way way way more things than whats happening now with verizon. that would be a really stupid move. If anything, I would go with sprint because having a decent phone matters to me. i wouldn't want the low end devices t-mobile and at&t get.
AT&T's first Android phone: Backflip. *raspberry* (locked down from jump st. with motoblur)
Verizon's first Android Phone: The Droid. Awesome! (unlocked with vanilla android)

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It seems Verizon is going down the wrong path tword locking down the android phones... As I said before, if you have to live with a locked down phone, I think the iPhone is a better experience.... There are still a lot of thing in Android that are not very polished.... The fact that the recent update to Froyo made Pandora and other streaming audio sound horrible is a classic example of Google sending something out half baked... Not being able to easily sync audio and video is annoying. The screen does not scroll as well as the iPhone and it is harder to pick the right thing on the screen than it is on the iPhone.

Also, I have been a little dissapointed in Verizon's service lately. I have virtual no 3G and home or at my office. It is ok at home as I can use my Wifi... But, the latest Froyo "upgrade" broke the wifi infrastructure that my company uses. ( another Google goof. It worked fine on 2.1) This causes the phone to drain the battery at work since it is always trying to find 3G. I have had AT&T in the past and they have a full five bars at both my house and my work. Verizon definitely covers more of my sales trerratory with 3G, but the coverage is not as good as I though it would be.

I can live with the annoyances that Android brings because it is ( at the current time ) more open. It just seems like that openness will be coming to an end in the very near future. At the current time, I would not buy any new Android phone because of the locked boot loaders and the really locked down samsung phones. I also do not like HTC sense....

sranger said:

I have to admit that I do not like what I am seeing from Verizon. Blocking Google search and creating their own app store. It seem like big steps in the wrong direction.

I am thinking about breaking my contract and moving to the iPhone. If you have to live in a locked down world you might as well go with the one that can easily sync video and audio with the phone....( Getting movies on the Droid is a pain... )

I am liking Verizon less and less every day.....

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How exactly is using iTunes easier than drag and drop? There's nothing easier than putting a video/mp3 on the Droid.

riffdex said:

How exactly is using iTunes easier than drag and drop? There's nothing easier than putting a video/mp3 on the Droid.

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When you buy a movie from the iTunes store, it downloads to your computer.

With the iPhone:

1) Buy a movie from iTunes. It downloade to your computer automatically.

2) Plug in your phone to the USB port and iTunes converts the movie automatically and copies it your your phone. Each movie takes about 15 minutes.

With Android:

1) Buy a DVD...

2) If if is copy protected, you have to find a ripping software that will rip the DVD...Run it for about an hour... ( If it is not protected you can skip this step )

3) Use a program like Handbrake run it through the conversion process to make it work on the Droid. This can take from a hour to hour and a half.

4) Plug the phone in to a USB and copy it to the SD card.

Which seems easier to you?

sranger said:

When you buy a movie from the iTunes store, it downloads to your computer.

With the iPhone:

1) Buy a movie from iTunes. It downloade to your computer automatically.

2) Plug in your phone to the USB port and iTunes converts the movie automatically and copies it your your phone. Each movie takes about 15 minutes.

With Android:

1) Buy a DVD...

2) If if is copy protected, you have to find a ripping software that will rip the DVD...Run it for about an hour... ( If it is not protected you can skip this step )

3) Use a program like Handbrake run it through the conversion process to make it work on the Droid. This can take from a hour to hour and a half.

4) Plug the phone in to a USB and copy it to the SD card.

Which seems easier to you?

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Thats not a fair comparison. You could just buy a movie off itunes (or an alternative video website) and drag and drop it into your Droid. Any time you try to put a DVD onto a mobile device (Droid OR iPhone), it will take longer because thats the nature of getting a DVD into a format the mobile can understand.

Yeah, and who buys iTunes music and videos anyway? Low bitrates and high prices FTW!

But yeah, one of the requisites for my buying a Droid was drag-and-drop support for media. If I was buying a souped-up phone, I wanted to stop carrying around a media player as well, and I refuse to use a crappy sync system like iTunes. You know what my favorite sync software is? Windows Explorer.

sooper_droid12 said:

Like I said, I don't approve of what VZW is doing (please re-read the post). But the problem with the reaction to this is a bunch of Bing-bashing. This is completely unwarranted. Some people have just been using Google for so long, it's like muscle-memory: Anything different is more difficult and therefore, crap. But this is not the case. Again, just my opinion, I don't mind the VZW bashing because what they're doing is blatantly wrong. But bashing Bing without giving it a long, and fair shake, is speaking out of ignorance. You really have to commit to it, not expecting that it'll return search results in the same way as Google and thinking, "If it ain't Google, it sucks." The Kool-Aid is just as strong on the Google side as it is on the Apple side.

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Dude.. Please, it is a Google Phone. Take Bing and shove it.

Mrwirez said:

Dude.. Please, it is a Google Phone. Take Bing and shove it.

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Well and Bing still sucks. Try searching MSKB or msdn which both use Bing, you don't find the answer. Now go do a site search using google (or anything else) and find the answer. Try searching for anything else, Bing just can't find anything.

sranger said:

I have to admit that I do not like what I am seeing from Verizon. Blocking Google search and creating their own app store. It seem like big steps in the wrong direction.

I am thinking about breaking my contract and moving to the iPhone. If you have to live in a locked down world you might as well go with the one that can easily sync video and audio with the phone....( Getting movies on the Droid is a pain... )

I am liking Verizon less and less every day.....

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iSycr app works perfectly for getting movies and music onto the Droid. Just create playlists in iTunes that you want on your phone and go!!!! It's simple!

sranger said:

I have to admit that I do not like what I am seeing from Verizon. Blocking Google search and creating their own app store. It seem like big steps in the wrong direction.

I am thinking about breaking my contract and moving to the iPhone. If you have to live in a locked down world you might as well go with the one that can easily sync video and audio with the phone....( Getting movies on the Droid is a pain... )

I am liking Verizon less and less every day.....

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I frkn TOTALLY agree w/ you!!!!!
BTW: when is the iphone coming to Vrzn? Now that 4g is jamming soon. I am SOOOO tired of finding an app to convert. Have to admit, we & technology revolves around the "I". Quite frankly, it IS alot easier.

Yeah, if Apple allows you to do what you want to do.

riffdex said:

Thats not a fair comparison. You could just buy a movie off itunes (or an alternative video website) and drag and drop it into your Droid. Any time you try to put a DVD onto a mobile device (Droid OR iPhone), it will take longer because thats the nature of getting a DVD into a format the mobile can understand.

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It does not work that way. The DMR copy protection does not allow you to put the movie on the droid.... I have not found a program with will early remove the protection so that it can be put on the phone....

I know that at least with music, burning it as an audio CD and then ripping it will remove DRM. But then you have the issue of degrading quality with all of those lossy re-encodes.

Or you could, you know, buy movies from a source that doesn't cripple the media with DRM.

shadowdude777 said:

I know that at least with music, burning it as an audio CD and then ripping it will remove DRM. But then you have the issue of degrading quality with all of those lossy re-encodes.

Or you could, you know, buy movies from a source that doesn't cripple the media with DRM.

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If you know where you can purchase Digital Movies without any DRM, please let me know....

bleedGreen said:

...Quite frankly, it IS alot easier.

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This is always true when your choices are limited or non-existent. Just like when I offer my kids a drink:

• PITA: What would you like to drink? What do we have? Water, milk, orange juice, apple juice, grape juice, lemonade, sprite, coke, cherry coke, root beer, dr pepper. Uh... what did you say? Grrr...
• Easier: Do you want apple juice or grape juice? Uhh... hmm... Apple. OK.
• Easiest: Do you want some apple juice? Yes please. OK.

sranger said:

It does not work that way. The DMR copy protection does not allow you to put the movie on the droid.... I have not found a program with will early remove the protection so that it can be put on the phone....

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I have yet to have any problems putting movies on my phone. I have dvd43 installed and after putting the dvd in it decodes it so then I can use handbrake to convert them. From start to finish with movie on my phone the process takes about 25-30 min.

Not sure how this is so difficult for evrybody....maybe I'm just used to making things work and not wanting/expecting it handed to me on a silver platter.