To be honest, I could really care less as long as it can be rooted. I just don't want to pay extra for tethering. People are throwing a hissy fit here about not being able to overclock a phone that can't be made to lag in the first place. This is a phone for consumers, hackers need not apply. Believe it or not, consumers far outnumber tinkerers. Did anybody consider that the phone may actually be good enough stock that custom roms will be completely irrelevant?
Yes but this can go both ways. While majority of the people buying this phone will not be tinkering with the OS, installing ROMS, rooting for hardware tweaks, etc... why not still provide an option to be rooted and ROM'd for the 5-10% of its tinkering user-base? I don't get why Motorola would hurt even any of its potential consumer-base right now...
I mean, provide a root option and you get roughly 100% of your potential average consumer-base that WONT root, and you still get roughly 100% of your hacker consumer-base that WILL root and ROM, not to mention more DEV support... You get what im trying to say?
By doing this, all they are doing is hurting their pockets anywayz. Sure, the average joe will still buy it, but now most tinkerers will not. Some average joes still might not even buy it after they read some biased reviews by tinkers saying the phone sucks. The only reason why i can see this happening is because of verizon making it mandatory. Im sure verizon does not want people tethering the phone without paying $20 extra... not like the 5% of the phone users doing it free of charge will affect the multi-billion dollar company that routinely adds a dollar or so to the monthly bill of its customers.
Add 1 dollar a month to one person... it almost goes unnoticed and they dont care as it is only 1 dollar. Do it to 3 million people or more and it goes unnoticed to those 3 million, but the company just made an extra 3mil this month.
I was going to possibly trade my Incredible for this phone with my g/f's mother if she didnt like the DX. However, after reading this, i will not. Incredible stays. I just wish HTC would send out Froyo sometime soon and not at the end of the year.... or AT LEAST FIXED THIS DAMN BATTERY CHARGING SOFTWARE BUG! Im sick and tired of turning my phone on and off and on and off repeatedly for a full charge.