So Verizon launched a new phone called the Motorola Devour. We wrote a post last month explaining that the camera (non-AF) on the Devour did not allow ShopSavvy to scan barcodes. We have been working on a fix – i.e. blurry barcode scanning on Android. Last night we released a test app (found here: http://bit.ly/scannersdk-android) that allows a Devour user to test the scanner. We bought a Devour on ebay to test on, but when it arrived WiFi was inoperable (neither Verizon or Motorola had loaner devices available). Since we cannot test our new scanner on a Devour ourselves we thought we would ask Devour users to test it for us. Assuming it worked we would launch it in ShopSavvy tomorrow. Holy Cow – did I start a sh*t storm.

I posted a request for ‘beta users’ in the Motorola forums and the moderator there warned Devour owners “…this is not a supported Motorola test.” and “…this is a “buyer beware” situation and Motorola is not responsible for any fallout if something here goes wrong.” Ouch.

Then I posted my request for ‘beta users’ in the Verizon Devour forums and the moderator there immediately deleted my request and sent me this email:

I happen to know that hundreds of Devour users were SHOCKED to learn that apps like ShopSavvy wouldn’t work on their Devours. We spend hundreds of man hours creating a new scanning library that we think will resolve the issue on the Devour (as well as the HTC Tattoo and HTC Lancaster) and we just need some real world validation before we launch. We have 26 folks testing right now and hopefully we will have good feedback. If you have a Devour please try to scan a few items with our test app and email us at support@biggu.com with the results. Thanks!

UPDATE: Verizon let me know that they won’t allow developers to work with users to get their apps running: