Published by JT on 05 Dec 2007 at 04:05 am
My wonderful phone
My first real post to my blog and do you know what I want to talk about? My phone… crazy, huh? But since I’ve just recently went through the effort of going through all this with a friend of mine, I thought it would a great to write about it here.
I love my phone… I really do. It hasn’t always been that way, of course. It’s always been a love-hate thing.
However now that it’s been hacked – I love it!
A little history – I got my UTStarcom XV6700 from Verizon Wireless almost a couple of years ago. I was looking for a phone that I could tweak to work the way I wanted it to work. What could be a better OS than Windows Mobile 5 for a person who loves to tweak things? The phone was absolutely amazing for it’s time — and to be honest, it’s held up to many of the phones out there today. Recently, the XV6800 came out.. and Xmas around the corner…
Okay – why do I love my phone now? It’s all thanks to the kids over at PPC Geeks and a beautiful little thing called Helmi’s Official AKU 3.5 Kitchen. The Kitchen is an amazing little application that will (re)build a Windows Mobile 6 OS for your phone! Along the way, you can incorporate a number of applications and features to custom fit what you need.
My phone is now sporting a super-sleek, blazingly fast OS… and I mean FAST! It’s perfect. Word of caution: Play with your phone first to see if there is anything you think it could do better. Don’t just starting installing things – or even listen to me. My phone is tweaked just the way I like it and it works well for ME. YMMWV.
First of all – buy EVERYTHING via Handandgo. Normally I would prefer to have some freedom in my choices of vendors – but Handango is sorta like the iTunes of Mobile software – it’s just too easy. No need to go anywhere else for software.
Second – after you setup Handango on your PPC- down load SPB PocketPlus. Worth every penny. This package will do 90% of what was left out of WM 6. Make sure you install this in the internal memory area – this way it runs faster and it feels as part of the OS.
Third – get a memory card. 4 months ago I got another 1 gig miniSD for $19 bucks. Store all data on this card. And most programs like games that you don’t always need access too. Since I don’t remove my memory card, I just install everything on the card. Also, don’t even think that you don’t have to reinstall software if you lose your phone – -this is not a unix device, its a Windows device. So even though you have everything on the card, you will need to reinstall everything if anything happens to your phone.
Okay below is the stuff I’ve installed on my machine via the Kitchen.
Software that I have installed:
Applications:
- Bluetooth A2DP Driver – Stereo bluetooth capability
- Bluetooth HID Driver – standard Human Interface Driver for bluetooth
- acbToggleBT – Audio gateway to Bluetooth
- 1-Calc Lite – the best calculator out there right now.
- LVM TopBat — shows a bar gauge at the top of the device for battery
- HTC Zip Application – zip/unzip
- Pocket RAR – RAR/unRAR
- Comm Manager (10-button) – this is that manager I showed you- it has more features than the verizon one.
- ClearTemp – quickly clears out temp files, something you’ll find out soon enough with these devices.
- dotFred Task Manager – another utility to kill off programs
- SPB PocketPlus – Worth every penny.
- Remote Desktop Mobile – RDC
- Adobe Flash Lite
- Adobe Flash Player
- IETools & PIEPlus – these items have duplicate functionality that’s in SPB PocketPlus
- HTC Audio Manager
- HTC Streaming Media Player
- HTC WMP Skin
- HTC Smartdialing – w/ the iBliss Phonepad
- SPB Phone Suite
- Microsoft Voice Command – totally awesome software – must buy!! much much better than the verizon stuff.
- IM Plus+ – multi chat client
- Google Maps
- YahooToGo
Games:
- Freecell
- Galaga
- Microsoft Hearts
- Kevtris (tetris)
- Pocket Sudoku
- CrossWords (Scabble of which I shame myself on a weekly basis)
- Solitaire City – just another solitaire card program (a number of version included) online high scores.
- All Mobile Casino 3 – just got this over the weekend. Went to a casino party and learned to play craps, now I’m addicted. Been playing night and day.
- SuperMiner
Standard software:
- OneNote Mobile
- Adobe Reader for PocketPC
- Office Excel/Word/PowerPoint
- Solitare & Bubbles
- .NET compact Framework – needed for a lot of stuff, you’ll be surprised.
If you want any information on the items above, just let me know.
JT

