BB 8300 already has Wi-fi & GPS chip in it - needs software client to become useable?
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OK hear this one out and tell me what you think of it
Was talking to my account's relationship manager here with my network provider in Bombay, India yesterday re: the launch dates of the new 8820 and 8310 in India (expected in early to mid December for those who are curious)
So this is what caught my attention during our chat - he claims that the 8300 device already has the wi-fi chip in it. What it does not have is the software to run the service
To prove his point, he did a battery pull on my BB Curve and then showed me the event log - lo and behold - there were two separate notes in my event log that said "failed to load GPS client; failed to load WLAN client"
He went on to say that its too darn expensive for RIM to re-configure or create a new production line just to add one or two new chips into the BB PCBs
Instead its a lot cheaper to software "lock" additional features of the hardware, and then "unlock" it by introducing a new OS with new software sets that will now run those hidden hardware configs and palm off the "unlocked" versions as spin-offs to the original model(s)
To me, his reasoning sounds spot on. Especially after seeing those two event log entries, I am now somewhat convinced that the vanilla BB 8300 aka Curve is indeed Wi-Fi and GPS capable but needs the right software client(s) and tweaks to the OS to make it work....
What do you folks think?
Anyone with some other discoveries that may or may not suggest the same?
The errors in the log are pme (plazmic media engine) warnings related to the themes having support for WLAN and GPS indicators. It's basically saying that it can't update the status of the indicators because there isn't anything to update from.
Plenty of people have completely disassembled 8300's and i'm sure a complete inspection of all included chips and radios has been done. If there was extra hardware onboard, someone would have pointed it out by now.
Arrggg - just when I thought there was some silver bullet to get wi-fi on my Curve without buying the new one....oh well...looks like I have a score to settle with the good ol' relationship manager now....never stops amazing me about how someone who works with the darn company that sells these things can spread just pure WRONG information.....
Arrggg - just when I thought there was some silver bullet to get wi-fi on my Curve without buying the new one....oh well...looks like I have a score to settle with the good ol' relationship manager now....never stops amazing me about how someone who works with the darn company that sells these things can spread just pure WRONG information.....
assuming you've never spoken with your carriers customer support staff?
Remarkably crappy tech support here in Brazil too.
My own theory about that is that these companies have finally decided to step into the 21st century and employ robots. Or rather something better than that: stupid people. The technology exists, it is readily available (lots of stupid people being born every day), it is fairly cheap (for a robot) and works... well, actually a lot better than actual robots probably would.
It's all a matter of how you perceive it. If you look at them as robots, they're a hell of a bang for the buck.
BB 8300 already has Wi-fi & GPS chip in it - needs software client to become useable?
