[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFYoT2lYU0]
The Sprint version of the Palm Pixi doesn’t have a WiFi option but the Verizon version (called the Palm Pixi Plus) does. The hardware is almost the same and [Gitit20] figured out how to do some hardware swapping to add WiFi. The radio board inside the phone is fairly easy to remove. Close inspection of the Sprint radio board shows some solder pads where a WiFi chip would go. The Verizon version has this chip, and moving that radio board into the Sprint phone will enable WiFi. This is strictly a hardware hack as the device identification (IMEA) is paired with the motherboard and not the radio board.
Now we want to see someone source that WiFi chip, solder onto the board, and enable it within the OS so that we don’t need a donor phone to make this work.
[Thanks Juan]
lol version does suck enough to go through all that trouble to get wifi on the sprint version
Nice work – I’m sure that Sprint’s 143 customers will be leaping in joy.
Good lord! Would it kill people to use some punctuation when writing in on-line forums? I fear for a human society that seems to be losing it language ability. Wasn’t that a critical step in the formation of human culture?
*sigh*
If i buy a car, I can get it with as many features as i am willing to pay for.
If i buy a cellphone, it is guaranteed to suck, not support half the features i want, and half the ones it does include will suck.
A mfg makes a good phone and the carriers decide they dont want their customers to know that quality phones exist, so they gimp the shit out of them.
WTF STOP IT!
IMEA ? It’s called IMEI !
I took apart some of the older palm treo phones and they seemed to be similar inside. The radio was off the main motherboard so that the radio module could be switched between cdma/gsm. The software obviously didnt like the new board, but it was a good flexible design.
xeracy, the reason for that is the cell carriers own the roads. If GM, Ford, et al owned the roads too cars would suck as much as cellphones do. The hoods would be welded shut with half the plug wires pulled off. Stupid Americans need to pull their heads out of their asses and stop believing “Ooh, only $200 for this shiny phone!*”
* With 2 year, $2500 minimum contract…
SDIO Wifi my man. Don’t even have to crack the thing open.
@bountytobefree – you are absolutely correct. that should give us some insight to how we might want to re-organize the chunks of bandwidth that assigned to wireless phone/data providers. I would love it if wired ISPs used municipal fiber/etc, so i wouldnt be stuck with only one internet provider that provides access to my house, while my neighbor across the street has a different provider, and we have no choice in the matter. Perhaps wireless spectrum should be similar…
@Josh
Thank you for making your complaint regarding the grammar and punctuation in the linked post compliant with the Internet Rules.
Specifically, the subsection stating that “All spelling and grammar complaints must contain spelling and grammar errors”
Now, on-topic, I’d love SDIO, but you’ll pry my 16gb sd card out of my cold dead PDA, so.. now what?
@Per Jensen – I was hoping someone caught this. IMEA doesn’t exist. IMEI does. But the entire statment is wrong, since CDMA doesn’t use IMEI, ICCID, nor IMSI. GSM/UMTS does. CDMA use ESN/MIN pairing.
Good hack though. I wish someone would do this for the older Verizon BlackBerry’s that were crippled with no Wi-Fi.
@FaultyWarrior / @Per Jensen
Nope. It’s a Pixi – an MEID/MIN-based device. Methinks it might also be using A-key, so in that case it’s authenticating via CAVE.
Wow, this hack is almost as good as the time I hacked my car to enable leather seats by taking them from another identical car that had leather seats!
@wiregeek, then you are a frakking retard. Store it all on google or a home VPN. My wife’s Moto RAZR has a great time and is 6 years old. If you want Wifi, this would be the other half of the solution. Anything else and you’ll have to pay me… ;)
Sorry at above. I wish I could dictate tone. “Frakkin retard” was meant in a joking, arm punching manner. I realized that you don’t know me and it was a little vociferous so I’ll go and repost what I wanted to say in a nicer manner.
We enjoy the use of our VPN and it’s 2TB of music, videos, and pr0n. Most phones can do this with MSN messenger, if you can’t do a VPN. Little less secure, but works well. Sorry for the tone wiregeek. Keep on truckin’ :)
From what I’ve read, there should be a ton of defectives laying around somewhere for someone to cannibalize…
when you do this do you still have to pay for the WIFI on the phone or do you get it for free.
Tyler: you’ll still have to pay your subscription to the wifi service, presumably ;)
YOU MIGHT AS WELL BY A VERIZON PALM PIXI! xD
i have a palm pre from sprint(current) and a palm pre plus from verizon(old(taken apart)). can i upgrade my pre to pre plus? and how?
nvm, job complete. wish i recorded it. palm pre came be up graded to palm pre plus. sweet!