Motorola stomps on A920 patch

The 3G Forum had published a firmware modification for this Symbian based smartphone which unleashed the handset's inherent support for both infra-red and Bluetooth.

However, the 3G Forum's Marius Vincent told The Age that he'd subsequently received a letter from Motorola's lawyers complaining that he'd infringed the company's IPR and demanding that the patch and its instructions be removed.

One of the consequences of installing the patch was that it removed the handset's software lock so that third party - but unapproved - applications could be installed on the A920.

The Age claims another user group has claimed to have found a hole in the A920's security which enables third party apps to be installed.

The incident has close parallels to the original lengths Orange went to in order to stop 'unauthorised' apps being installed on its SPV handset.

The side effect of the 3G Forum's patch which probably most irritated Motorola was the fact that after installation, users could no longer connect voice calls via Hutchison 3's W-CDMA network, instead they could simply make calls over Mmo2's O2 network (part of the standard roaming agreement).

Stomping on the patch does illustrate the point that for some reason 3 is unwilling to let its 3G network be used to carry personal computer data.

Why else would it be so keen to switch off Bluetooth and infra-red? The 3G Forum pointed out that some dealers had even advertised that the A920 supported these protocols - without realising that they were, in fact, switched off.

The Forum has now started a petition urging Hutchison 3G to remove the software lock and so far nearly 1,300 people have signed it. Find that petition here. µ