Hey, on a sidenote here... If VZW doesn't have a problem with someone buying an external GPS and using Bluetooth to get it to work with this phone, why bother with disabling the onboard GPS? It's not like they sell aftermarket GPS pucks. They loose revenue that way as well. I guess they are just betting that most of their users don't know you could do that and just do the Zombie thing and use whatever VZW sells them as a service. That's the only logical conclusion I can come up with. But if that's the case, why not leave the GPS enabled and just not preload BBMaps. Let the user figure out they can load up a mapping app and get it to work, it's no different then getting an external puck and doing that. Hummm....

Of course, here's another logical explanation for all this GPS BS. The GPS in the phone was not disabled. The code was rewritten in such a way that it interfaces with their "proprietery" software VZW has for LBS. Because of this rewrite, the GPS in the phone now only works with that.... so basically they had two choices. Recode their software to work with the general APIs of the phone (logical step) or recode the OS to meet their apps needs for interfacing. Hell, maybe the app they use (most likely VZNavigator doesn't even use APIs, it talks directly with the GPS chipset. In some OSs if API are present for hardware control apps designed to interface with that hardware directly cannot access it due to API priority. If the OS was designed this way they'd have to strip the APIs away, which explains why no other GPS app can properly talk to the onboard GPS. Hummm....