My GSM Treo 600 with AT&T Wireless service is, IMHO, the first essential smartphone. Even with the amount of effort to get it configured, it’s a net benefit to your daily life. However, international travelers know that one of the great features of GSM is being able to buy prepaid cards with a local number in whatever country you’re visiting (Croatia, Ecuador, Morocco…). That way, people you’re interactining with in the country don’t need to call a long distance number in the States, you pay reasonable prices, and you don’t get waken in the middle of the night with an office worker calling about a minor issue.
AT&T locks their phone to make this impossible, which is especially ridiculous since I already signed up for a year service package. Thankfully, people on treocentral have figured out how to crack the lock.
The file is currently available from here (updated). If this link breaks, go to TreoCentral and search for “patched.zip”.
1. Unzip all the files and copy them to the /PALM/LAUNCHER folder on your SD card.
2. Hard reset the Treo. That is, hold down the power button, while you use the reset pin on the back with the unscrewed tip of your stylus. Keep holding down the power button for two seconds afterwards, pushing the reset pin, then let go, and choose erase all.
3. Insert the SD card, navigate to it using the standard application launcher and run FirmwareUpdater.prc.
4. Click OK, click the Update Now button, click OK for the warning,
5. Sit back and relax, it’s going to take a good 10 minutes.
6. The phone will automatically hard resets at the end of the process.
My heartiest thanks and congratulations to Mol and the rest of the gang on TreoCentral for creating the patch (which relied on a fortuitous crash to reveal the relevant code). Note that they can’t say for sure, but it appears that future firmware downloads will leave the phone in the unlocked state.
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