I get annoyed when I buy a phone or piece of software only to find I need to wait for firmware or other patches to fix it.
Microsoft have got away with it for years.
Take the magician, T-mobile say now no further upgrades. How easy would it be to add native a2dp, it claims bluetooth 1.2
The universal no working fax s/w, modem drivers, native usb disk drivers as opposed to active sync. No a2dp
Avantgo and other s/w not working on the supplied t-mobile build requiring a firmware upgrade and newer version of wm5 from t-mobile.
What constitues a working device? How many of you have had to use hacked or ftp'd rom's to get a stable device, no memory leaks.
How many people have bought a web camera?, printer only to find that the latest windows version does not have a driver, manufacturer won't supply one.
I think under environment and disposal laws , manufacturers should be made to support the devices for at least 5 years.
Consumers invest money and expect some care for their hard earned $.
I think there should be a better enforced 'suitability for intended purpose' on electronic equipment... we are unlucky with PPCs in that they are such an emerging technology right now, so they are full of bugs.
It is a valid issue you've raised.
The problems inherant in rushing a product to market are as old as the capitalist system!
If a company delays too long trying to get all the bugs out of a product they risk being beaten to the market by a competitor ... which is apparently bad. We have seen cases where superior hardware platforms have failed because they took too long to get to market, and software development was all committed to the first product, even though it was far inferior.
Continued development for an old product is less profitable than releasing a new product.
The irony is that companies can get away with releasing new products which have MORE bugs than the old one ... and people will actually pay money to upgrade. Often because they are attracted by features that they don't need, and which aren't properly implemented anyway.
But new or 'upgraded' laws will never stop this. Companies regularly break laws with little concern because they know that they can reap large profits which will offset the problems that may arise IF they are caught.
A pefect example of this is the body of laws governing the environment and abuse of it for dumping etc.
Companies react much more readily to market forces ... really bad publicity will do more to change a company's activities than laws. Look at Sony and their lovely little rootkit.
And the majority of consumers are simply apathetic.
At the risk of inflating egos ... people who can actually be bothered to seek out and participate in a forum like this are the elite. To actually consider flashing a new ROM onto your device is a concept that most members of the public would find overwhelming.
Blogs, webforums, and participating in projects like those carried out by XDA-DEV are more likely to impact on the future of Pocket PC's than laws which are unlikely to be written, and if they are, won't be enforced properly anyway.
That is true... it would be nice to think that perhaps the developers of Windows CE visit this site and learn from what the greatest members of this community has achieved.
Does any one know of a theft alarm that will give a warning when my mobile is away from the receiver (in my pocket) more than a certain distance? Maybe built on RFID technology or blue tooth?
Your question made me imagine a phone tied by a piece of string to one of your pockets, so if someone jerks it out without you noticing, it would also jerk your pants. lol
that would be the simplest solution; still, I prefer technology, a very tiny transmitter hidden in the mobile, preferably a passive RFID tag so it will not contain a battery which then will be paired to a receiver that can only detect this tag. If the mobile is out of range, a buzzer and vibrating alarm is activated in the receiver.
I know that this seems possible, however, current RFID readers are priced in Ks of $, and this will not make it feasible for every one to buy it.
There are some alarms in the market with the same idea but built on different technology, their problem is that the transmitter is noticeable and the thief can simply remove them the moment he picks the mobile.
http://www.tradekey.com/selloffer_view/id/887081.htm
ok so you are running late for work and forget to put the non mobile side of the detector on your person one morning, you get part of the way out the door up the street and your phone starts buzzing and beeping like crazy.... run back to pick up the chip???
yeah if you really want this that bad string sounds good.
cktlcmd said:
Your question made me imagine a phone tied by a piece of string to one of your pockets, so if someone jerks it out without you noticing, it would also jerk your pants. lol
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Also, if the phone slip of your hand, the string will prevent it from drop to the floor. Not a bad idea, expecially you get two protections for the price of one.
If you carved some gooves into the side of the phone you could make a yoyo too.
come on guys, where I live, 3 out of 5 mobile owners had their mobiles theft at least once, if we use the string alarm, I imagine every one walking down the street is screaming out of pain because a thief tried to steal his mobile and had to let go when he found it stringed, this sudden release hearts I think
phones are considered disposable technology these days, i remember a few years back when insurance companies in australia use to offer insurance on phone theft but no one really bothered with it much.
if someone wants my phone badly enough to try and take it from my pocket i garentee there will be some sort of weapon involved and they will want my wallet and keys too and that being the case they can have it.
also considering that most people are aware that a phone can be tracked via the cell network who would buy it? its not like you will pay $50 down the pub for it knowing that someone would have reported it stolen and ur average thief aint smart enough to know how to change the IMEI number nor would anyone who is stupid enough to buy a $50 phone at a pub with half a string attached to it (LMAO)
st3v3 said:
phones are considered disposable technology these days, i remember a few years back when insurance companies in australia use to offer insurance on phone theft but no one really bothered with it much.
if someone wants my phone badly enough to try and take it from my pocket i garentee there will be some sort of weapon involved and they will want my wallet and keys too and that being the case they can have it.
also considering that most people are aware that a phone can be tracked via the cell network who would buy it? its not like you will pay $50 down the pub for it knowing that someone would have reported it stolen and ur average thief aint smart enough to know how to change the IMEI number nor would anyone who is stupid enough to buy a $50 phone at a pub with half a string attached to it (LMAO)
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Obviously you have not been on any poor parts of the world, based on your opinion. But in reality, there are parts of the world where cell phones don't have insurance, and they do sell it on the nearby pub, and people actually will buy them believe it or not. Just my observation.
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where I live, it is exactly as what cktlcmd described, a phone may cost the salary of several months to some people, police can not track all of them and they get stolen only when you loose your attention for one moment (it takes less than 30 seconds of not paying attention to loose your mobile as per statistics), so may be a theft alarm does not sound feasible where st3v3 lives, but here, it sure is. Besides, loosing the data and having someone looking at your personal data is what hearts more.
hatamata said:
where I live, it is exactly as what cktlcmd described, a phone may cost the salary of several months to some people, police can not track all of them and they get stolen only when you loose your attention for one moment (it takes less than 30 seconds of not paying attention to loose your mobile as per statistics), so may be a theft alarm does not sound feasible where st3v3 lives, but here, it sure is. Besides, loosing the data and having someone looking at your personal data is what hearts more.
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point taken but having the phone vibrate and beep still isnt going to act as much of a deterant, a running thief will just keep running!
hatamata said:
Besides, loosing the data and having someone looking at your personal data is what hearts more.
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Backup frequently (automatically - see my Backup Bible at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1270&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 ) and use a Secure Information Manager. The four best are:
CodeWallet Pro (Developer One, Inc., www.developerone.com)
eWallet Professional (Ilium Software, www.iliumsoft.com)
FlexWallet (WebIS, Inc., www.webis.net)
Spb Wallet (Spb Software House, www.spbsoftwarehouse.com)
st3v3 said:
point taken but having the phone vibrate and beep still isnt going to act as much of a deterant, a running thief will just keep running!
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Not the phone that will vibrate, it is the receiver which should be in my pocket
As for Menneisyys's back up idea, it sure will save most data but not all of it, still, it will not prevent others from seeing my sensitive data stored on the phone.
hatamata said:
where I live, it is exactly as what cktlcmd described, a phone may cost the salary of several months to some people, police can not track all of them and they get stolen only when you loose your attention for one moment (it takes less than 30 seconds of not paying attention to loose your mobile as per statistics)...
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Click to collapse
I know that there are countries where a phone cost a few months of salary.. but I'm pretty sure that in those countries, there are always cheaper alternatives. E.g. India's gazillion-aire may buy an A380 as private jet.. build a tower as his own house.. but they do have pretty cheap cars (as I heard, £1,000+). Hence, I don't really understand when people are willing to spend several month of salary on a phone. If that's the case, then probably that's a risk they have to take. E.g., you don't get a convertible car in China unless you are prepared to hire body guards.
AND, if that phone is going to cost the person buying the phone x months of salary, I would think it would cost y (where y > x) months of salary for the person who is stealing it, and some beeping gadgets will not do the job. The beeping gadget will probably make a `theft` to a `robbery`, I think.
Anyway, cute beeping gadget .
hatamata said:
Not the phone that will vibrate, it is the receiver which should be in my pocket
As for Menneisyys's back up idea, it sure will save most data but not all of it, still, it will not prevent others from seeing my sensitive data stored on the phone.
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You can encrypt everything on, say, your card in the background - WM6 already supports this. Also, there already are Remote Wipe solutions.
XDA is a mainly community of developers. However we all use mobile devices, they are sometimes faulty, damaged, bricked and so on.
In highly developed countries customers are usually respected, quality control of products for these markets is usually better. In less developed countries customers are sometimes held in contept when it comes to warranty service.
I think as a community we may also bring a bit of light on subject of after sales services - divided by brands/countries.
Why do that?
Buying product is not only about its functionality but also about after purchase services.
We like to tinker in stuff we unlock permanently bootloaders, root devices and some producers claim that it affects even warranty of charger, water resistance of phones and similar things that are ridiculous so it should be exposed. Phone(or any mobile device) is just like PC. Which producer will claim that we broken PC hardware by changing or tinkering with OS? None! Why it does not fully apply to mobile devices world?
There should be a place to describe our experiences with customer support by brands not just a single devices.
Quality of hardware repairs in some cases is LOW, we may apply a bit of pressure on producers to change it.
This forum should require more posts and thanks to actively participate in to prevent large scale abuse - black marketing .
Guys, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this. I don't know about you, but I don't know of any other way of achieving this and so I've created this petition (second post). Or, we can idly sit by and have our rights slowly taken away. I clearly understand the "reasoning" behind this (although, to me, they sound more like excuses); however, I'm not advocating DEFAULT, but rather CHOICE! Here it is:
Useless bloatware floods our phones, and thus companies effectively rob us RAM, disk space, (mb) data, (personal info) data, and battery, but what's more, they lock down the opportunity to rid them, leaving some of us to resort to drastic measures such as rooting, leaving a handful of us with a semi-functional device (due to "Safety Net" games, losing Fingerprint Scanners, "Knox", you name it!) and the majority of those who dared, with a brick, uncovered by warranty due to their boldness of going against their draconian, greedy wishes.
Now, to illustrate this: apps that are free have ads, and if you don't want those ads, you pay for a PRO version, right? Why can't we decide what we want on a device we paid for? If they want to force content on us, shouldn't then the phone be free of cost?
The situation is tantamount to buying a car and having the manufacturer dictate you can't remove the stock radio in favor of a JVC, or "allowing" your use of only "x" brand of tires, or if you use "y" motor oil, your warranty will be void! Add to that locked bootloaders and UICCs in our devices, and pretty much you're paying someone large amounts of money to restrict your choices!! That has got to stop NOW!
Aren't companies supposed to care for us? It certainly doesn't show here. We are the consumers. Let's stop being the product, not the customer! We order. They comply!
Please sign if you agree. Petition in second post.
Sign if you agree!
Samsung: Free(v.) phones! - Sign the Petition!
https://www.change.org/p/samsung-free-v-phones?recruiter=618598739
There is a bit of a problem brewing in my home country of Canada: A couple years ago the Canadian government passed a bill BANNING all Hauwei devices from all Canadian wireless networks. This ban will be going into FULL effect by the end of this year, (the time the government gave all Canadian tech companies to ban & remove all hauwei devices from their install bases.) People here in Canada still use Hauwei devices today, and by the end of the year a lot of Canadians will be stuck with glorified overpriced mp3 players. (The ban only applies to networking, not local functionality.) This is going to be a LOT of e-waste.
My personal perspective is this: I agree with the ban, screw Hauwei and their stupid spyware. However, in my personal use situation, I buy cheap chinese, (currently using a cheap walmart onn), tablets. I want a big screen but no expensive horsepower. I just want to read comics on the thing, not play steam games. I own nearly 30 game systems and a capable gaming PC. I don't need a tablet to game lol There IS a use for these cheap devices.
The problem with these Hauwei devices is not that complicated, but it's one that the average end user isn't going to be able to solve themselves: spyware. I have thought about this, we just need to gut these devices of this crap and they would be perfectly fine to use, but the end user wouldn't know how do that--forcing our government to implement this ban.
This is why I come to these forums, to prevent this massive pile of e-waste. First and foremost we must deal with the root problem and purge these things of the spyware. My thinking is:
1. Wipe every byte of firmware/data from these devices and install custom roms/firmware. (You could probably just kill the soft spyware without going this far, but we may as well make these divices suck a little less in the process right?)
2. Disable any sketchy hauwei chips on the boards that we can do without.
Techs like myself have been disabling security chips and putting custom firmware on game systems for over 20 years, and hauwei devices are generally not very sophisticated in comparison.
I have looked at several hauwei devices (phones) personally, but did not have the time to do a deep dive and properly assess the boards/chipsets. I will try to get my hands on a hauwei phone and do just this, (these things are usually dirt cheap anyway.)
Took me a while to get to the point, but I'm sure there are people on these forums that already know full well the security and the location of nasty bits of spyware that we need to purge, yes? I would appreciate any insight any of you could provide on exactly what we are dealing with here.
I know these devices are largely garbage that we probably shouldn't care that much, but at a minimum we can cut down on the e-waste right?