Verizon has been ripping the customer ff for years.  Not quite as bad as Sprint.  They won’t do rollver minutes and the lock up so much of the capabililiesw of their phones, i.e.  gps and bluetooth as well as others.  They for you to buy their products.  The problem is they still have the most reliable network.  Maybe a class action suit will help. I will gladly put up some money towards it.  Verizon knows they have you buy the ball and will exploit you to the end.  I think they are run by republicans like the oil companies.

What needs to happen to start a class action lawsuit. Seriously. This is BS.

Unfortunately, Verizon in the US is not the only operator to resort to this sort of deceit. Blackberry in India is provided by Reliance Mobile, and they too disable the GPS. And out here, they just don’t give a damn. They don’t even have an alternate paid service. It is ‘to be launched at a later date’.

In response to Jason Purvis.
Jason, your response is disturbing (unless you are an employee of VerizonWirelss, in which case they would be right on par with the corporation’s behavior in this matter). Please do not defend the actions of this deceitful corporation. Verizon wireless DISABLED the GPS in software. It is still disabled. They lie when they claim the 8830 early advertising of GPS for the 8830 was only for e911 services. If the e911 limitation were true, why do the other phones in the advert not advertise GPS as well?
3rd party (AKA Free) GPS applications are disabled in software. This shows up as as “GPS signal too weak”. This gives users false hope, that all you need to do is get a better signal.
We all paid for an “unlimited” data plan, and this should include blackberry and or Google map data. VerizonWireless want us to pay another $15 dollars a month to enable VZNavigator to replace a feature included in our phones and using satellites paid for by US taxpayers. VZNavigator will not work when outside the Verizon network, so no GPS in Europe.
Their solution is poor, and costs users extra money. Please do not defend the actions of VErizonWireless, the company’s actions are shameful, dishonest, and insulting to their customers.

I am canceling all business with Verizon and VerizonWireless. I am starting with two landlines at $50 a month. My datacard is next.
I have been a VZW customer since my first analog cell phone, but their actions disabling GPs on the 8830 and lying about it crossed my line.

Jason, this quote from the vznavigator link you posted:

VZ Navigator is a GPS-enabled application that transforms your Verizon Wireless phone into a powerful navigation device. With VZ Navigator, you get visual and audible directions to a destination, you can locate businesses and other places in an area, get a map of a location, bookmark favorites and recent searches, and even share locations with others.

This fits with what I have been told by Verizon, it uses the GPS which is much more accurate than cell triangulation. Chill out dude.

Of course VZ Navigator uses cell tower triangulation, it is not, and never has been designed for use with fully autonomous GPS therefore why would it suddenly use the gps on the 8830…..It doesn’t, read verizons info on it @ http://vznavigator.vzw.com/about.html and you will see that it calls it ASSISTED GPS, which means that it uses cell towers and NOT your gps reciever!

Sorry if i sound annoyed but get your facts straight before you start posting things like this on the net and misinforming people. Verizon is still crippling the 8830, because it doesn’t need to enable it for vz nav to work……

Someone should dig up the telecom legislation to see if Verizon actually OWNS YOUR PHONE. The auto manufacturers once claimed they owned the OBD-II data codes, but that was challenged by consumer groups and the consumers won. Which is why you can now buy OBD-II code readers and let Pepboys do onboard diagnostics without visiting your $tealer.

Verizon is disabling the existing software and hardware features of the phone to try to get you to pay them a monthly fee for using hardware you already paid for and a public satellite signal provided free by the government?

Color me unsurprised.

They’ve been treating their customers like crap for years and will no doubt continue.

Note from the former big-telco guy:

Whether it is wireless, broadband, or wireless broadband, the telcos do NOT want to be a big fat dumb pipe.

It should be no surprise that their offering works and others do not.

Tsk-tsk!
;)

Woadan

I’ll bet VZ Navigator on your phone is using triangulation.
I have a non-GPS phone and use VZ Navigator, which is USUALLY pretty good, but falls down in 2 circumstances:
1) Areas with poor or no cell coverage.
2) Walking in a city — resolution can be poor and positional data erratic.
I am getting ready to bolt from Verizon after being a “loyal” (and lucrative) customer for the past 4 years because of their restrictive policies.

Thanks for the update James. I guess that open apps commitment will start very LATE next year, sigh…

I know you’re pain. I’m suffering the same thing on my Pearl and my 8830.

I also wanted to say that I appreciated your article about an outage last night because at the exact same time I had one too for about two hours, I think it might of been something with VZW BIS in my case, but luckily it resolved spontaneously. No matter if it was just me, VZW, gmail, my exchange server, what have you – I appreciate your articles even when they’re just a call for feedback.

Keep up the great work guys!

PS…how do I get to be on the list for LTE tests? I want that job!