Verizon uncripples GPS on Pearl and Curve!

Okay, I caved and used an exclamation point in the title. But that’s only because I’m legitimately excited. I was just browsing around the Internet yesterday like I usually do, when I saw that BGR had a new post up. So I went to my RSS reader and had a looksee. What did I find? Verizon has enabled GPS on the Curve and Pearl! See? There I go again with the exclamation point. Again, warranted. This is a pretty big development, as Verizon has been notorious for disabling their GPS units in all smartphones. This has irked me and countless other VZW customers to no end. We have phones with GPS chips. GPS signals are freely available. So why the heck can’t we use them? Well, now we can. To an extent, that is. What, do you think Verizon would let us run around willy nilly with our fancy GPS units? Nah. There are some restrictions. First, you’ve got to have OS 4.5. You can head to the BlackBerry Forums device-specific section to find out how to get OS 4.5 for your Berry. Also, it only appears to work with BlackBerry Maps. I tried it with the much-cooler Google Maps and it was having none of it. This is a pleasant surprise from the folks at Verizon. No, it doesn’t give us the full GPS functionality we crave — after all, you can do plenty more with your GPS than driving directions and maps. But it’s also nice to know we can get turn by turn directions without having to pay $10 per month for VZ Navigator. If any of you test out other location-based apps with your VZW Berry, let me know how it goes.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.