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