Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I Bricked My Phone...

I was really happy to read that Sprint released a Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM upgrade for the HTC touch.  I downloaded the upgrade and read the readme file. Look how easy it is!  Your phone will be updated in under 10 minutes!

Not so fast, chief.  The status bar got to about 10% and then failed.  I now have a useless piece of plastic that was once my favorite phone.

On the phone to HTC technical support.  They claim they have received a number of calls from Touch owners that have tried to upgrade the device's ROM from Vista systems.  Damn you, Vista!!!  They walk me through a hard reset of the device: hold down the Send and End Call buttons while tapping the soft reset button.  Then press Enter to reset device to factory defaults.  No dice.  The update had gotten far enough along in the upgrade that the old ROM had been wiped out. 

On the phone to Sprint Customer Care. If you want an exercise in patience, try explaining to a front-line rep what a ROM upgrade is.  They tell me that it will cost $50 to replace the phone, since I damaged it.  What the heck?  Finally convince the rep to transfer me to Technical Support.  I explain my story again, and they transfer me to the Premier Care department where the CS reps have more power to get stuff done...  still on hold... thank goodness!  They are sending me a new phone.

So what have we learned?

  1. Vista stinks. I was trying to "upgrade" to XP a few months back, but was stymied by my lack of XP SATA drivers for my Latitude D830.   Then I started my new job, the computer seemed to be working all right, so I said "forget it" and upgraded to 4GB of RAM instead. This experience has convinced me to get XP on this system as soon as I can.
  2. Sprint didn't test this installer on any Vista systems.  Seriously, I can't see how this is possibly my fault.  Fortunately, Premier Care said all new Touch models ship with Windows Mobile 6.1 installed.

An exciting night!  I will enjoy silence on my commute the next couple of days.

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