“Debranded” my (formerly) Cingular Sony Ericsson W810i phone

I finally got fed up with the handicaps that Cingular in their ultimate wisdom decided to force on me and my Sony Ericsson W810i cell phone. I always found it odd that they decided to NOT let you add a POP3/IMAP email account to the email client, but lived with it. Google mobile apps worked ok. Lately, however, I've been playing with more Java and web apps and when I tried to install the ShoZu.com Java app and received a nice “operation failed” msg, I decided I was fed up.

After a little googling, I came across the oddly named WotanServer.com site which describes itself as the “Online debranding and software upgrade for SonyEricsson mobile phones.” Saw a couple other ppl have success so what the hey, only about 10 bucks and I was preparing my explanation for the replacement insurance claim if I bricked it.

Anyways, it was pretty straight forward, albeit scary, to upgrade the firmware and debrand the phone. Seems to work fine and I got the POP3/IMAP email client. ShoZu installed fine.

Stuff works a little differently, but more or less the same as before. I highly recommend the hack. All settings including the data settings were gone, but fortunately I had info saved from a website. 

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