hothardware.com — The campaign, called "Free Your Phone," asks consumers to sign the EFF's petition to the U.S. Copyright Office for an exemption, as well as asking consumers to share their stories about locked cell phone frustrations. As the EFF says, rather than protecting copyrighted material, the locks instituted by cell phone manufacturers and carriers are buil
Jan 26, 2009 View in Crawl 4
gregrJan 26, 2009
So, you can't answer the question and you have to fall back to just creeping me out!
zer0massJan 26, 2009
You seem to be forgetting that if signed into a contract you are subject to an early termination fee which is normally around $200. The carrier would recoup some to all of what would have been a loss without the ETF, depending on how long the customer was paying on that contract. I'm willing to bet within 3 to 6 months the phone is more than paid for. Not 2 years.But the point is having the ability to switch carriers if you want, regardless of what ever contracts and fees you got yourself in to.
chronomagnusJan 26, 2009
Comment buried for unnecessary summoning of Orwell
khedorosJan 27, 2009
I'm on AT&T, which is a GSM carrier. There's only 1 other that I know of, and that's T-Mobile. And I think CDMA phones can be "re-flashed" onto a new network.
tushydJan 27, 2009
I've been using OM2008.12 and it works pretty well. It's true that it is still pretty buggy, but you should have known what you were getting into when you bought one. The community isn't huge, but they have made some significant strides considering the Freerunner came out just this past summer.
dragon76Jan 27, 2009
If everyone bought their phones, unsubsidised contract plans would be cheaper and prices of phones would come down because your phone would work with every carrier meaning manufacturers could reduce prices based on true competition.
andrewmoyerJan 27, 2009
This happened to the Desktop Printer industry... it's a slippery slope. Once somebody successfully pulls it off, the rest follow soon after.When you're selling what essentially amounts to a commodity, and yours has an advertised MSRP that's 3x as much as the competition, most people won't bother to look any farther to see the devil is in the details."I got a $20 (or free) printer!" ... "Crap, I have to buy a $30 ink cartridge now."
fyngyrzJan 27, 2009
Right, it's not just LG (it IS them in that they provided the option for the carrier -- they certainly didn't have to make the ringtone playing code breakable) it's Alltel as well. Just as the iPhone problems aren't just Apple; ATT is just as complicit.
immatellyouwhatJan 27, 2009
I was kidding, I have an iPhone on at&t and I am happy but a lot people complained about it when it came out even though phone companies did it before anyway.