Vodafone upsets customers with upgrade downgrade Vodafone customers with an HTC Desire, waiting for Android 2.2, instead got a new firmware version packed with Vodafone bloat. Froyo is the new version of Android and adds some useful features to Google’s mobile OS. Vodafone customers have been waiting excitedly for an upgrade their HTC Desire phones, but on installation they …
Bought a refurb HTC Hero from 3 last week. Id rooted and upgraded it to 2.1 within an hour. Just waiting for a stable 2.2 with all the features to arrive then I'll do the upgrade.
Like computers, once you've started it up to make sure its working and not DOA is to format/root it and start with a fresh image. At least then when you have problems later down the line, you've not got the 'freebie' extra's clogging up the system and adding to the complexity of any issue and have a reasonable idea of what is on the system to aid in problem finding.
Also tried an Orange Desire, and the complementary extra's were aweful. Two market places, a paid for traffic app, nasty branding and other such irritating features are not a great way of ensuring love of one of your flagship phones. Again, an hour's work and a newer stock image was loaded, and the phone is now brilliant where before it was average.
Do they do the same with iPhones too, or does Stevey Jobsworth block that?
In VietNam most handphones are sold unlocked and unbranded ... today's youth roll the models over so quickly telco's would have a hard time designing a plan. The pricing is either just below and at par with contract prices in Europe only without the contract.
Supporting this hungry market is a 74-page monthly magazine that highlights ll the latest and greatest goodies. VietNam is also a test market which frequently gets handsets before others.
VietNam has over 140,000,000 active, working cell numbers deployed over 8 networks. The total population is around 90,000,000 so there must be many subscribers with more than one cell phone.
"It's annoying that I have apps installed that I do not want or will never use but it's not really that much of an issue."
If it's not much of an issue, stop whining and do what others do : drag all the stuff you don't want to a folder called "unused" (or some such variant) and stick it on a page of its own at the arse end of the user interface, where you can occasionally visit it to point and laugh.
Alternatively, just jailbreak the fucker and remove them.
I have an iPhone & it's not encumbered at all.... Why don't you look at one and get your facts right before commenting? Apple control the user experience & while that gets complained about by those who haven't tried it, for the rest of us it's one of the great selling points for the phone (same applies to all the Apple kit-no crap ware)
yeah :(
Last I read was that 3 didn't have enough QA to sort out iphone 4 and Desire release. So after kicking a few builds back to HTC, they HAVE finished the 2.1 release, but it's now 'at google'..
And they 'dont know' how long it will be before the release comes out...
http://blog.three.co.uk/2009/12/07/the-htc-hero-with-spotify/
Hmm, though it would appear HTC seem to be hosting a file ?....
http://www.htc.com/uk/supportdownload.aspx?p_id=283&cat=2&dl_id=840
my first few symbian devices were preloaded with crap links and software when i got them from vodafone ireland on prepay. so i switched to sim free phones.
i stayed with vodafone till last year when they changed their prepay plan so that every fecking page had a vodafone banner and crappy links at the top.
so i threw away all my vodafone sims. now using 3, o2 and meteor. no problems from them so far.
will never deal with them again. their loss. coupla hundred euros on prepay credit a year till that time.
It is cheaper, never understood getting a phone on contract from their operator.
Over two years I am saving 300 quid for a phone and I don't get locked in with crap you don't want or need. Go to a shop, buy the phone and get a sim only deal for pay as you go or contract. More expensive upfront, but a heck of a lot cheaper two years later.
....it most certainly isn't cheaper to go the SIM free route. I looked into it with the Desire and found it would be 200 quid more expensive over 2 years to do that.
There is a way to get the unbranded firmware on a Vodafone-supplied phone, using the Gold Card method. It works, and it will not affect your warranty. Most recommended if you didn't buy via a route that already used unbranded phones.
A major fail for Vodafone though, hope they decide to backtrack on this one.
Vodafone are offering very competitive deals on Android smartphones (most of which can be re-flashed with Vanilla Android very easily). For example - free Android smartphone on a 2 year £30 a month contract (I looked at Desire and Nexus One but they have others too).
A sim-only deal with the same minutes, texts and data is only £5 a month cheaper, making the cost of the handset just £120. A new unlocked vanilla Nexus One on eBay is still around £400.
For comparison an iPhone 4 (16Gb) from Vodafone with the same contract length, minutes, texts and data would cost you £120 up front and an extra £5 a month for the same contract.
Android is about open. It's not about vendor crap. "We customise phone software to optimise customers' experience of the device on the Vodafone network and to enable access to our services ... " .. yah fine, whatever, now how do I remove that shite? Oh, I can't remove it? Uh huh, so how does that enhance my services?
Always wondered why sony ericsson on voda network sounded crap when my wife's (same model mind) always sounded crystal clear on O2. No crap installed. Or, in the case of games, free stuff uninstalled so you only get trial crap and the super cool option to buy the games.. you already get free from the manufacturer..
Oh, that's right. You read it on teh interwebs. It must be true then.
Bollocks. Android is only about getting the carrier's crap onto your phone; getting google's ads onto that crap and then siphoning your data off for sale to the highest bidder (and the lowest bidder, and pretty much everyone in between). That's the real revenue stream for both the carriers and google. All that talk about openness is just so much camouflage.
Give me the honesty behind the iPhone every time. At least I can see where Apple gets their revenue from and decide how much of their curated ecosystem I buy-into.
>>Give me the honesty behind the iPhone every time. At least I can see where Apple gets their revenue from and decide how much of their curated ecosystem I buy-into.
Oh that is just.. hahahah. uh. hah.. hahaha. Good God, you are such an ass. And a moron to boot. Hahaha..
>>Oh, that's right. You read it on teh interwebs. It must be true then.
Well, I guess that's right, considering the project is on 'teh interwebs'.
http://source.android.com/
http://developer.android.com/guide/basics/what-is-android.html
Moron.
Paris. Displaying more intellect than some folks 9 days a week.
But you didn't buy "Android" did you? You bought a phone which can run Android or whatever the operator decides to push out to it.
"Android is open" is one thing, "Android should be pushed without a ton of crud" another. Complain to the operator, vote with your feet. You have a complaint but nothing to with Android being open or not.
I believe his point was that Android phone's selling point is the way that the platform is open. And as a result, it has become a powerful contender to other touch phones with app store systems.
Any other phone on the market is not expected to be open, since the platform is inherently closed to hobbyist activities. So people choose Android because they want choice, want the ability to choose their "way" when it comes to how the phone works.
To then go and put crap on that cannot be removed (and additionally affects battery life negatively) without rooting the phone is to destroy that openness that caused the consumer to choose the device in the first place.
-That- is the problem as I see it.. and I believe what AC was reaching for.
I'm a Desire owner but not with Vodafone. The comments I've read from users here:
http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/140467-odafone-customers-beware.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=743865
indicate that this is an update to 2.1 that adds the Vodafone crap to the Desire. Of course, users rushed to install the update thinking it was 2.2.
Would Vodafone does this to the iPhone....?
Most European operators are pushing out the 2.2 Froyo upgrade for the Desire this week but this latest one from Vodafone is still 2.1. Rather than keeping up with their rivals, Vodafone have been developing this 2.1 update 1 'patch'. This is another reason why so many of us have been expectantly awaiting this software update.
As an enterprise business customer, I'm pretty annoyed at the poor communication and lack of removal for this. Match.com and flirtomatic bookmarks? If my wife found out I had these stored on my browser, I'd be in the dog house for a long time. I couldn't even prove the update produced this as Vodafone have released no documentation that correlates to the results.
So Vodafone... I've been a loyal customer since 2005, upgraded at every opportunity, and took on a shiny new HTC Magic in July last year. You promptly *ahem* upgraded it to Android 1.6 in October.
Now two major releases of Android later, and I still have no new shiny Android. Who knows what my phone is vulnerable to? I haven't had an update in almost a year. My Windows PC would die if I did that to it.
Anyone know how if/how Android 2.2 could run on the Magic?
First chance I get I'm going to an iPhone. At least Apple keep their kit up-to-date.
I'm currently running CyanogenMod 5.0.8 (Android 2.1) on my Vodafone Magic, and its excellent. MS Exchange synch and tethering built in. Runs smoothly with no noticeable lag.
Tried CyanogenMod 6 (Froyo) RC1, but found that, while it works OK, feels slower and less responsive than 2.0.8.
I am old enough to remember (10 years ago!) when my branded Vodaphone meant an extra menu stuffed full of unique and exciting Vodaphone special services, all of which did no more than dial the same Vodaphone Customer services number and all of which meant signing up for extra cost for some ill defined 'benefit'.
Plus Ca Change
SIM free phones and no contract. Saved me £thousands over the years. Its the only way to go.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
