Vodafone Please Fix the Firmware

A couple of weeks back Vodafone acknowledged that they are actively scanning blogs to find complaints from customers. So here is one.

A couple weeks back I bought a Nokia E65, it’s a great phone. Again: it’s a great phone. The only thing that I can not get to work is the build-in VoIP application. I’ve tried all settings I could think of, googled around the world and still no solutions. Some people suffer from the same problem, being that it registers fine to my phone provider, but I can not make outbound calls. It simply tells me it can not make a connection.

We’ve done a scan on the ip-packets send from the phone and it seems on outbound connection it does not try to authenticate to the server. A bug in the software.

Now the big question is: who is responsible for the bug. The software is adjusted by Vodafone (firmware version: 1.0633.58.02), they have plugged in some menu’s for Vodafone Live. That’s fine. Or rather: that’s the problem. Nokia tells me to go to Vodafone, as it’s their software. Vodafone does not understand my complaint, but when I get someone on the phone who actually understands me, the answer is that they have not changed that part. At least they say so. I can not change to the Nokia firmware as that is not published anywhere and probably not installable as I have a locked phone.

I told them to send me the software as I wanted to look at the source and see if I could spot the problem. They refused that (o surprise). I asked them if I could provide them my account data so they could test it. They refused that too. You know, when you do these things, you need to take responsibility for it and provide support.

I’m out of options now. There goes the key functionality why I bought the phone. Sigh. I don’t count on a new firmware by Vodafone. I hope this is fixed for my next phone.

4 Comments

  1. Unfortunately Vodafone actually block VoIP calls on their network, see http://www.techworld.com/mobility/news/index.cfm?newsid=8719 for more info.

    It may be possible to get VoIP by unlocking your phone, but I’m not sure. It works on some networks.

    Have fun :-)

    Kyle

  2. Buy an OpenMoko ;)

  3. I had the same problem with an unusable-branded SE M600. Vodafone was about 1 year behind the latest se releases and the custom fw made the device nearly unusable (they changed the ui). The solution for me was to unbrand the phone (not unlock which is propably unlawfull). With the original fw everything is fine. There are a number of unbranding services on the net, I used http://www.kulankendi.com. I will cost you 6€ and worked fine in my case ( I don’t know if they support Nokia phones though).
    What did I learn: never buy a operator branded phone again :(

  4. vodafone sadly cripples the voip capabilities on nokia phones with their own firmware. once you use the original nokia software it works fine (most of the time *cough*, there are still plenty of bugs, too). and i’m not even talking about vodafone not routing those packages over umts / gprs. it won’t even work over wireless lan with their firmware.

    as tty56 mentioned, unbrand it, get the original firmware and you should be fine. using it myself with a nokia E70.

    cheers,
    muesli