14 DAY TRIAL // People always turn red when they hear the handset they bought some time ago has been put a side by their wireless carrier and that their future software upgrades won't be available even if they would dramatically increase the speed and the overall performance of the device.
This is the case of the PPC-6700 series, manufactured by UTStarcom and available on Sprint and Verizon's networks, two carriers that have decided the upgrade of the phone's operating to the AKU 3 revision will not be necessary.
Even more, Sprint has also decided the AKU 2.2 was also unnecessary so the PPC-6700 stood ground and felt slower than the Windows Mobile 2003 enabled devices. And this decision of the carrier has followed Microsoft's statement that the AKU 2.2 performance fix was critical and will provide the Windows Mobile users an important performance bonus by improving Direct Push support, fixing memory addressing problems and adding new dynamic code that improves the screen rotation.
That was a pretty curios move coming from Sprint especially if one has the good sense to acknowledge the PPC-6700 as the most powerful device on the Verizon and Sprint at the moment. If I were in Sprint's shoes, I would feel pretty awkward now that a well known Windows Mobile hacker that goes for the name of Helmi has hacked and released a Windows Mobile 5 AKU 3.3 specially designed to work on the PPC-6700 I am writing about and also for the XV6700.
And this is not the only thing he is working at because rumors say that in a very short time from now he will also release hacked versions of the AKU 3.5 and the Windows Mobile Crossbow operating systems, also for the abandoned PPC-6700 hardware platform.
The times when Sprint was forcing their users to buy new hardware in order to get software upgrades (the guys owning PPC-6700s surely remember they were forced to buy the devices in order to get EV-DO, a feature missing on their older PPC-6600 handsets) has ended now because the users are finally able to get a software upgrade that will make their hardware work as it should be.
For the ones of you who decide to upgrade their handheld's software, you should think twice before beginning this operation because this is an unsupported upgrade and no one will pay you money if you turn your phone into a brick.
The ones that do take that road should be sure they place their units in Bootloader mode before running the update: hold Record and Power buttons and, at the same time, hit the Soft Reset button. Continue doing that until the white screen appears, connect the handset to the PC and install the upgrade as usual.
REMEMBER: NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE IF YOU BRICK YOUR DEVICE!!!
The update for the PPC-6700 is available HERE (carefully read the instructions) and for the HTC XV6700 Apache HERE.