My phone is hacked!

So on Sunday I hacked my phone and I'm now running Windows Mobile 6.1 with Rev A and aGPS. For you non-geeks, WM6.1 has not been released yet, Rev A is a super fast wireless data connection that isn't on any phones yet, and aGPS would normally cost $10 a month to enable. Shhh! Don't tell Verizon!

Needless to say I'm quite happy. I've got nice memory and power management improvements. Apparently someone involved in the development (hacking) of my new ROM fixed some WM6.1 memory leaks. Call signal and quality is supposedly improved. The bluetooth drivers have been updated and people are reporting a better signal but I don't notice anything. And there are a few tweaks that make the phone a little nicer to use. I've got threaded text messages now, I think that's a WM6.1 thing. All sent and received messages from the same person are shown in a thread so you don't have to refer back to old messages. The aGPS works scary well when outside. Like other GPS receivers, you can't get a satellite fix inside. While driving around and zoomed in on Google Maps satellite view it had me in the correct traffic lane. It showed us in the left hand turn lane and sitting at red lights correctly. Its nuts. They are watching you!

I did have to call Verizon and re-authenticate my phone when I was done flashing the new ROM but that was painless. The a-key on my phone is blank. I think if Verizon used that parameter I could just enter the old number back in and I would have been good to go.

Now to get more advanced I can mess with creating my own ROM. The geeks have gotten pretty sophisticated in a short amount of time with this new phone and have developed "kitchens" for non-hackers like myself to "cook" a new ROM with my own preferences and preinstalled (or uninstalled) software. I can do little things like turn off the flashing LED light, disable the 'text message sent' alert, tweak the volume settings, preinstall video streaming software, etc. All with new versions of drivers and software leaked or stolen from other phones/providers. Wish me luck, or I'll have a nice new paper weight.

UPDATE: Sprint just released a software update today for their version of my phone that includes Rev A and aGPS. Apparently it is the first phone to officially use the Rev A network. I wonder why they don't do anything (or don't know) about all the people like me unofficially on the network.