Carrier customizations

[johnston411]

For a long time now i have wondered why mobile phone carriers feel the urge to lock down their devices and put their own customized (for want of a better negative word) roms on them.

I can understand from a branding point of view that T-mobile are the pink company, Vodafone are the red company, o2 are the blue company, Three are the green company and Orange are... well you get my drift.

The problem i have is that on their devices they seem to concentrate on filling them up with branded roms containing a great deal of normally unnecessary software.

Has anyone ever pressed the t-zones button?

The time and money spent on rom customization would be far better spent on making sure devices are released with up to date roms and the subsequent support of updates.

Additionally, and this really irritates me, why do they feel the urge to lock them down so that you cannot replace their roms with ones of your choice such as a stock manufacturers rom or even, dare i say it, a cooked rom which removes the bloatware you don't want and includes the freeware you do.

I know that the argument is that by allowing customers to tinker with the firmware there is a possibility they may receive a larger number of returns/repair requests but surely it would be less than they currently recieve from customers returning bricks they have flashed without correctly unlocking first.

In fact i'm sure that in the contract they could even write in a clause staing that firmware flashing voids the warranty.

Whilst i'm having a mild rant i will also never understand the policy to sell devices sim-locked.

If i have signed up to a contract with a carrier i am unlikely to go over my allowance as they throw minutes and texts at you nowadays. Why should it bother them if i choose to use my phone with a different sim card in it from time to time? They're still getting paid and most nowadays will not allow you to reduce your contract until near the end if at all.

I'd quite like to be able to take my device on holiday and buy a localised sim card with some credit and data rather than pay over the odds for the priviledge when i get home, worse yet have to pay when people call me.

This is where vodafone have been smart and i have several friends and colleagues who remain customers of theirs simply because their WM devices come sim-unlocked.

Just to clarify i'm talking about devices on contract and not subsidised pay as you go deals (still if you're policy is to sell phones cheaper in the hope people won't unlock them for use with a cheaper carrier more fool you).

I guess what i am saying is if i sign up to a contract for 18-24 months and agree to pay a set sum of money per month for the duration to cover the cost of the handset and price plan is there really any need to worry too much about what i do with it once i get it home?

Rom development/customization costs money money that would would be far better passed on to the consumer as a reduced cost in contract or in a better quality of support for updates. The fact you'd get a stock rom as the manufacturer intended would just be an added bonus

Also just because a device is unlocked and supported by the carrier it won't mean people won't renew their contracts at the end because their device is up to date. I would go so far as to say that if in receipt of competent support the customer would be looking forward to renewing for another couple of years with a new device/toy to tinker with.

I wonder if any of themn are listening?



(cooked touch hd rom from pdaviet. MUCH NICER)

[waveydavey]

I find in the most Orange and TMobile ROMs are bogged down and full of rubbish, but O2 and Voda ROMs have always been much better and closer to the ODM's ROM.

As far as cooking and flashing ROMs the bottom line is that it's illegal. Nobody is going to publically condone that.

[windows]

Agreed over the ROM cooking, what is needed is for OEM's to release decent ROM packages and update them regularly.

[neilm]

I totally agree about the Operator branding. Luckily Orange seem to have learned a few lessons, and my two most recent Orange WM phones, the Diamond and the Toshiba TG01 have had very minimal 'interfering' . They do come with Orange's generic 'Front End' which seems to be universal across the board with their 'feature phones' but at least with WinMo, it is in the form of a defeatable Today plug-in.

It isn't just the operators though. Anyone who has bought or played with a Toshiba TG01, or some of the recent Acer devices will have seen them impose a manufacturers custom front end. These are generally overblown poorly perfoming and lacking customisation ability and I really don't know why they waste their development money, when most users dump them at the earliest opportunity. Buying a license for SpB Mobile Shell would probably cost a lot less, and give the customers a much better solution.

The exception here is probably HTC who have actually developed their TouchFlo front end to a very usable degree

[fowljr]

Totally agree on the ROM & carrier locking front, as you say, you're locked into an 18 or 24 month contract, so what's the worry about what you do with the phone?

Agree also on the Voda & O2 ROMs being a better calibre, but I will admit to not having much experience of T-Mobile or Orange these days!!

[Michael_Mcr]

i ordered a new phone from Vodafone about 3-4 years ago over the phone ( Sony Erricson k700 as i recall). During the course of the conversation with the salesman i mentioned that i hated the red Vodafone logo and branding on the phone itself and he said that he would supply one without the Vodafone logo on the phone case - which he subsequently did.

He also said during this conversation that all suppliers were under an OFCOM (or whichever governing body) directive to supply phones which are sim-unlocked "if the customer requests that" - but they dont advertise this fact to their customers for obvious reasons.

Vodafone dont sim-lock their devices, but he insisted that all suppliers HAD TO supply a phone capable of using ANY sim-card, if requested by the customer.

I dont know how true this is, but he seemed intelligent and credible.

[johnston411]

The cooked rom debate is one that will go on and on without any real outcome.

What i find bizarre is the carriers can customize the microsoft licenced OS and redistribute it so in essence there is not much difference in cooking your own as long as it's the same OS from the same device or available update.

I know it's not as cut and dry as that but really the point is don't fill my device up with your uneeded branding and use the dosh for something useful

[johnston411]

Just noticed your post Michael.

I told t-mobile recently that i wanted to unlock my hero and was originally told it would cost me. I explained this was possibly illegal and suddenly was offered a complimentary unlock

coincidence.....

[The Mailman]

Its not just the software - what about the Hardware modifications they make. I have a T-Mobile variant Diamond and the screen protecters need modifying with a razor blade to get them to fit.

But the worst is the hardware buttons. On the HTC Diamond the top line is Home & Back and the bottom line is Phone Pickup / Phone End. I bought a very nice black silicon cover and never thought anything about it. Phone calls worked fine etc, for a while...... Then I kept getting weird reactions when trying to use the hardware buttons - especially when making calls. Yes you have probably guessed - the buttons have been swapped with the phone buttons on the top and the Home/back on the bottom.

Why? I just cannot think of any purpose in this modification

[KevinR]

I think that like with a lot (almost all) products that you buy these days the answer is marketing. Its sad, mentally challenged, loony marketing, but there you go. I learned about 12 years ago that my then employers marketing department and salesforce were incapable of selling something unless it had a clear new feature. Even though it was a complex software development product they could not think of another way to sell it. Even ease of use, or speed of use or quality were beyond them. They had to have a feature to hang the marketing off. Thus we forever had to add new flashy features and had a much smaller budget for fixes or true improvements.

I have no reason to believe this mental limitation applied only to their staff. Thus many of the non-smart phones get marketed on a given random feature (music, capacity, the fact its touch screened, whatever). The WM phones are almost too complex and flexible for marketing to even think about. Think Dilbert territory here. So they have to have a look, or a unique front end, or a random set of included "extras" to make the focus of the ads. If it barely works or slows the whole thing down why would marketing care! That's another department or two.

I could understand then skinning the interface with their colours or adding one menu of allegedly useful features or even adding something that tracks your billing or usage. But those are rarely if ever done.

The whole sim-lock thing is I think a holdover from when the phones were massively subsidised on the contract. Certainly on some carriers (eg O2) the subsidy no longer applies and maybe that's why less of their phones have been locked lately - even the Zest which was unique to them in the UK. Equally they cannot charge as much in the UK for competitive reasons so they rely on the roaming charges to make big money. So this probably still drives the sim-lock in some companies. If you go abroad with the wrong settings you can clock up £100s if not £1000s in data charges. Ka Ching. So even if you do it on purpose a simlock makes them loads of money.