Got a New Toy Here! Treo 500v - Upgrade It To WM 6.1

Well, since my TyTN II is already passed away (flexible broken *sob*) so I was looking some simple smartphone out in the market and found this Treo 500v (codenamed Palm Otto). This is the only Treo produced using Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition - shipped with WM6.

This phone is very similar like any other Palm phones. It's beautiful, sleek and powerful. I might be kinda exaggerating, but I found that I like almost all of Palm's products. Okay, first when I tried the WM 6, it has a built-in Vodafone theme which is nice. Too bad I can't stand it and immediately browse for the ROM upgrade in the xda-developers. Why XDA-dev? Because if you search in Palm.com, you will be kinda shocked to know that this phone is not even listed in their product listing for unknown reasons. But still, this is a nice phone. 

Okay, here we go. To upgrade a phone, it always comes to this part : Read all the notes from the ROM developer to avoid bricking your phone and also read the comments from the earlier tester :).

From the caramba_sda :

Original Thread here.

NEW: my_rose WM6.1[en]v.3 Keyboard like the Treo 500 Vodafone
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...&postcount=160

OLD:
Based on Microsoft's emulator v.6.1.4

Deleted:
•Office
•OneNote
•WindowsLive
•Catalog

Added:
•CHomeConfig
•ClockOnTop
•IntrudersMissedCallsSmsFix0.4
•Reboot
•AudioManager
•HTCSlidingPanel
•PhoneCanvas_2G
•VolumeControl
•tgetfile
•TopBarBattery(Vista)
•PPS=8Mb

Okay, now the fun part: 

1. Download the ROM from here
2. Format a MicroSD card to FAT16
3. Copy the .abi file
4. Press and hold down in the d-pad while powering the Treo
5. You will then see a red progress bar in the below Palm logo. Wait for almost 15 minutes and voila your Treo is updated.

Here are some screenshots from me :

The new splash image, cooler huh?

 It will show that it runs a Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard in About screen
  

In my own experience, using WM6.1 is very very very very snappy. It boots much quicker and stable. Also if you prefer to use the newest version, you could download the WM 6.5.2 and WM 6.5.3 ROM from the same caramba_sda. I haven't tried it yet so I can't say anything about both of the ROM.  Of course thank him if you want to. :)