[jungleland]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8800/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

I emailed the CEO of Verizon, Lowell Mcadam regarding the crippling of GPS on Blackberry devices that have internal GPS, below you find his response. I have formed my own opinion regarding his response, but I will not let my opinion pollute you forming your own opinion

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Mr. Xxxxxx
I appreciate your comments and thank you for sending them to me. One of the side effects of the internet is that inaccurate information is often propogated and becomes "fact". In this case, reality is that we do plan on bringing the GPS services to market before the end of the year. We have not disabled the feature. We decided to launch the device rather than wait for the capability to be delivered on CDMA dual mode devices. We realize that having the feature on the 8830 will bring new revenue to Verizon wireless and meet customers needs. That is why our technical and product teams are working hard to get the product ready for market. There is no conspiracy here.
We look forward to winning your business.
Lowell McAdam

[crazydude]

actually no comment

[Entropy666]

Come on they at least have to come up with some good excuses. That is not a real answer

[tomtheguitarguy]

Originally Posted by jungleland

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8800/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)


Mr. Xxxxxx
... We decided to launch the device rather than wait for the capability*to be delivered on CDMA dual mode devices.* ... That is why our technical and product teams are working hard to get the product ready for market.* ...

Lowell McAdam

An admission from the CEO that Sprint has a better network?

[juwaack68]

Originally Posted by tomtheguitarguy

An admission from the CEO that Sprint has a better network?

Exactly my thought.....

[Dawg]

too much reading between the lines. What I got out of the same statement was we wanted to make sure we could capitolize on our investment.

[JSanders]

I figure it's a personal emotional problem. My heavens, he is named "Lowell"!
He got beat up too much in Junior High.

[JRSCCivic98]

Sounds to me like he either doesn't understand that the GPS capabilities of the phone are autonomous and by GPS capabilities he's relating to VZNaviagator or he's intentionally avoiding that aspect of things altogether and only focusing on what VZW characterizes as GPS Navigation for their 8830 devices.

[Dawg]

Originally Posted by JRSCCivic98

Sounds to me like he either doesn't understand that the GPS capabilities of the phone are autonomous and by GPS capabilities he's relating to VZNaviagator or he's intentionally avoiding that aspect of things altogether and only focusing on what VZW characterizes as GPS Navigation for their 8830 devices.

I would say the latter of the two

[akosnitzky]

I am offended that you were not addressed as Mr. Jungleland.

[test54]

so he's saying that GPS is not available right now because their programmers cant get Navigator to work on the 8830? well atleast he's saying something to address the issues.

[dwp1975]

* We have not disabled the feature.*

That is the FUNNIEST part of the statement, so he is saying that RIM never made internal GPS on the 8830? Funny thing is he is open to being fired back on, because the 8703e is NOT a dual mode CDMA device and it's GPS is crippled.

[JRSCCivic98]

Please, by all means, fire back if you feel like it. Here's his email... He's either blatantly clueless or playing the obvious Good CEO, Bad Company routine... <-my favorite.

[akosnitzky]

Originally Posted by test54

so he's saying that GPS is not available right now because their programmers cant get Navigator to work on the 8830? well at least he's saying something to address the issues.

I concur. I also think they were afraid of people abandoning ship for iphones and the curve.

[Dawg]

Originally Posted by akosnitzky

I concur. I also think they were afraid of people abandoning ship for iphones and the curve.

they arent afraid of anyone bailing if they were they would do something to change it and have they no. Its a dead horse so stop beating it.

[BFEINZIMER]

Noone thought that the reply was a fake? I don't think the CEO of VZW would reply to such an email considering that he is smart enough to figure out that it might be posted on a forum such as this...

[John Clark]

I don't doubt it's authenticity. However, I doubt it was written by him. I'm guessing he has an administrative assistant (secretary) that answers emails for him. She probably went down the food chain a little to get the answer. Probably went like this: "Oh, another one of those.....just tell them..blah blah blah."

[brittonx]

If he doesn't want mis information being posted on the Internet then Verizon needs to come out and make an official statement about the issue.

Also, since the GPS capability is working on Sprint's 8830, then I don't understand his statement: "We decided to launch the device rather than wait for the capability*to be delivered on CDMA dual mode devices." Duh... It's available NOW.

One possibility is the Verizon programmers may have been tasked with trying to get the VZNavigator working and also attempting to block other 3rd party apps from accessing the GPS so they can charge for using it. Blocking all other 3rd party apps's access to the GPS API would certainly be challenging.

Fortunately it's not my problem anymore since I switched to the Sprint 8830 which is working beautifully.

[MichaelBB]

Originally Posted by Dawg

too much reading between the lines. What I got out of the same statement was we wanted to make sure we could capitolize on our investment.

I would agree with you Dawg on that but if the CEO wrote this "Why isnt it on there web site or a statement from Public Affairs"

Why is it that GPS works just fine and dandy on Sprints network? Well that part is easy, because the GPS chipset talks to the Application using it which searches for the satellites. So it just works. When they release there new version it will cripple the functionality of the device to work with VZNavigator and thats all its going to do, at least thats my opinion.

Once again as far as customer service I give VZW outstanding score, swapping out or fixing equipment, excellant, CRIPPLING a perfectly good device -100 and lower.

[JRSCCivic98]

I wanted to add that the crippling of GPS was done actually by RIM under VZW's request. VZW didn't rewrite the RIM code. The firmware in the phone (not he OS cod files) is written in such a way that on bootup the firmware looks up two check ids. It looks for Vendor ID and it looks for Model Number. If the answers from the phone is 105 and 8830, GPS is disabled and the bootup continues to load the OS. This is built into firmware of the phone in every carrier's OS because the firmware is a cross-carrier version. This is why loading up Sprint's OS doesn't do squat. Hope that helps with everyone to visualize things.