I have a Verizon plan that gives you a free phone every two years. I don’t use my phone much, and I missed the last opportunity to upgrade. However, in December I got my free Razr V3M in the mail and I’ve been using it from time to time. I wanted the Razr because it has a camera and I wanted to be able to snap a picture with my phone if I didn’t have a camera with me.

It turns out that Verizon crippled the ability to off load the images to my PC. I need the images on my PC so that I can blog them. I had a bunch of pictures in the camera, but it costs 15 cents to email them. I am too cheap to pay. Verizon wants you to pay for emails and pay for ringtones and pay for everything else.

So I hacked the Razr. I now transfer pictures to my PC without a problem. I have Little Walter’s Off the Wall as my ring tone. I have James Brown yelling “I Feel Good” for message notification.

It’s not so easy or straightforward to do, but I am a hacker by trade and temperament.

Here’s a web site that has fairly easy instructions: Hack the Razr!

I used some of my FreeNameAStar profits to buy a microSD card to store images. Meritline has stuff very cheap and some of it has free shipping. I ordered a 512K card and an extra reader for under $20 total.

The Rarz only has room for a few images. The microSD card is an alternative to hacking, but they hide the socket under the battery and it is a bear to pull it out to plug into the computer. I like the fact that I can charge the battery in the Razr with the USB cable while I’m transferring images.