And now, Virgin Mobile USA

You might’ve read about the new Kyocera Slider Sonic phone. Well, check out the comments on that one. Andrew Jaffee was surprised that although the KX5 came with a USB cable, he couldn’t, for the love of God, transfer images from his phone to his PC. The reason? Quote from Virgin Mobile USA’s e-mail to Andrew:

“It wasn’t so much a business decision that made the phone unable to transfer pictures to the computer but a hardware limitation. Anything stored in the Transflash card, such as videos and MP3s, is transferable to the computer via the USB cable. Pictures taken by the camera do not get stored in that memory, but in the phone’s internal memory, along with ringtones, contacts, games and wallpapers. The internal memory of the phone is inaccessible via the USB cable because of the way it’s set up. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.”

Matthew R.
Virgin Mobile USA

Virgin essentially blocked the transfer of photos (and maybe more) from the phone’s internal memory to the external flash memory card, and claim that you can only transfer files from the external flash card to the PC using the USB cable. Man, I’m getting tired of reading the many ways in which US carriers are ripping off their customers.