>> Hypothesis 2, the more paranoid one: Some people have been suggesting
>> that Verizon have been deliberately breaking these phones. The reason
>> given is that they aren't E911 compliant, and if they were still
>> functional, Verizon would have to *give* you another one in order to
>> be in compliance with the minimum 85% that the FCC wants. Now that
>> it's "broken", they can *sell* you another one, or lock you in to a
>> new 2-year contract. (Note that this doesn't necessarily contradict
>> the first theory.)
> You may have some validity in wondering about the second.
OTOH, the Nokia CDMA phones traditionally had issues. My GTE Wireless
2180 (activated 1996, CDMA 800MHz and AMPS 800MHz) was a solid performer, but many of the 5180, 5185 and 6185 models just sucked.Verizon (and Sprint, the other big US CDMA carrier) stopped selling Nokia for a while.
Nokia finally wised up and started licensing Qualcomm's CDMA chipset instead of trying to do their own, and as a result, their products have returned to Sprint and VZW stores over the past few years.
It's not the first time a cellular company has used underhanded
> practices to force people to buy new equipment and not re-emburse them > for doing so.
> Cingular has done that with their acquired AT&T Wireless subscribers > in many cases.
I'd not be surprised if VZW did intentionally do *something* to the phone, but I'm not sure how they would have done it, except perhaps by pushing a bum PRL to the phone. The phones in question can't do over-the-air firmware updates.
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