PDA News - Verizon Bluetooth update, Mobile Opera, New Pocket PC Phone

v710 Bluetooth status update

Well, it's official--according to Motorola's techs, the decision to cripple the Bluetooth implementation on the v710 phone lies with Verizon. For Verizon's part, their justification for not letting their customers use the hardware they purchased was that it "[doesn't] work with our business model," and that essentially their customers can go to hell. Actually their wording, when asked if there was any chance that Bluetooth would be fully implemented, was "No," and their response to anyone who didn't apprecciate Verizon dictating the use of the hardware they'd bought was "We have a fifteen day satisfaction guarantee."

Thank you, Verizon, for reminding me why I hate you. I definitely needed the booster, since the v710 had actually looked attractive despite the insane price. I have no use for a 'service provider' who treats their customers like cattle, and believes that they exist to service it.

Meanwhile, on the grounds that "it worked well with the Clie NX70V," enterprising v710 user Jonathan A. Zdziarski has established the 'v710 Hacker Fund.' The fund is essentially a bounty for anyone who manages to enable the missing Bluetooth profiles--object exchange, Object Push Profile, and Serial Port Profile.

An excellent article on the v710, and why Verizon is evil

Details of the Bluetooth bounty

Opera ports to MS Smartphone

Popular third-party web browser Opera will soon be available for Microsoft-based smartphones. Previously, the company has concentrated their efforts in the mobile device market on Symbian based smartphones. Opera offers improved speed, new page rendering techniques for viewing large sites, and better customization versus competing browsers. The company has stated that they would also consider porting Opera to Pocket PCs depending on the level of demand.

Hey... (waves at Opera) There's some demand over here. I do love Opera.

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2004/08/31/

New HTC lightweight Pocket PC Phone

Pocket PC Italia has photos of a new HTC-built Pocket PC Phone. While the specs are unimpressive--400 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 48 MB ROM, and Bluetooth--the machine is remarkably small and light, only 4.1 inches long, 2.3 inches wide, 0.59 inches thick, and 4.5 ounces. This makes it the smallest Pocket PC phone on the market. There's no information on when and if it might be released, or by what carriers, but it does have quad-band GSM/GPRS, so we may see this in North America at some point.

http://www.pocketpcitalia.com/magician_preview.asp

Toshiba e830 sighting

The Toshiba e830 made an appearence at a recent technology show in Japan, complete with photos. The site is in Japanese, but the specs can be discerned clearly enough to tell that this is indeed the e830.

http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/event/20352.html