Sprint Mogul getting the EV-DO Rev. A treatment, as promised

Here's a treat from HTC and Sprint to lighten those Monday blues: the Sprint Mogul, built by HTC, is getting a software update to bump the phone's data connection up to EV-DO Rev. A, roughly doubling current download speeds, and really boosting uploads. This makes the Mogul the first phone in the States to hit Rev. A speeds, and should make the $199 phone quite the attractive option for modem usage when an ExpressCard would be just too darn convenient. Only problem is that when Sprint and HTC promised this update in back November, they also said GPS would be a part of the package -- and just such a ROM was leaked in January. We're not sure what happened to that feature, but we'll try not to look a gift horse in the mouth for the time being.

Update: Turns out GPS is indeed included in this update, as confirmed by Sprint.

[Thanks, Joel P.]

[Andrew @ Mar 10th 2008 10:08AM]

Awesome.
Too bad it only has 64MB of RAM, making multi-tasking a pain in the ass.

[ethana2 @ Mar 10th 2008 12:36PM]

Ask the Wiili people how it's done ;)

64MB is enough to run what, fluxbuntu?

[Zach @ Mar 10th 2008 2:25PM]

The problems with the phone being slow would be easily fixed if HTC had the proper drivers installed. There is a lot of hardware that isn't being utilized that would make the phone run just fine. They say a fix is coming. We'll see. I'm really hopeful for it.

http://htcclassaction.org/

http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=HTC+Driver

[OneLove @ Mar 10th 2008 12:39PM]

mine came with a 512mb card and I just bought 2gb

[TRAFFICBLOWS @ Mar 10th 2008 1:01PM]

ummm you bought 2gb of RAM? if only...

[Andrew @ Mar 10th 2008 1:17PM]

I'm confused, and I suspect you are too.

If I was able to buy 2GB of RAM for the Mogul I wouldn't be typing this message on my HTC Touch right now.

Cheers

[Toleraen @ Mar 10th 2008 1:29PM]

Taking a quick look at my Hermes (64MB RAM) I'm running IE Mobile, Word, Comm Manager, Total Commander, Windows Media Player, Remote Desktop Mobile, MS Live Search, Java, Messaging, and Solitaire (of course), with 8.3 MB of program memory left. 64 MB really isn't that bad.

[OneLove @ Mar 10th 2008 3:28PM]

sorry I was talking about storage. lol. my bad.

[CUBSWILLWIN @ Mar 10th 2008 5:32PM]

will newer moguls come with this pre-installed or will you still have to put this on yourself?

[Brad @ Mar 10th 2008 7:47PM]

Moguls manufactured after 2/28/08 will have this pre-installed (that's the ROM date). How old your Mogul is will depend on whether you have to do the update or not. It is quite painless though.

[Bryan @ Mar 10th 2008 10:32PM]

no wonder you are hating on the Mogul. you are a Touch fanboy.

sure the stock roms suck, but thats what optimized ROMS are for. We Titan owners have had GPS and Rev A for the past month or so and already working on WM 6.1

id rather have Wifi (look up WMWifirouter) and a hardware keyboard then the extra 64mb of ram. ive learned to get very used to it

[Andrew @ Mar 10th 2008 10:40PM]

Relax, Bryan.

I'm definitely not a "Touch fanboy".

I myself once owned an HTC Mogul, it was pretty good too. I also installed custom WM 6.1 Roms and enabled GPS and Rev A. Meh, it was decent.

The Mogul has the following problems in my opinion:

- Poor call quality
- Poor build quality
- Poor speaker phone quality. (tinny)
- Poor Bluetooth stack. (even after installing a modified one)
- Poor camera quality.
- Lacks 128MB of RAM, this is a HUGE shortcoming. A user shouldn't have 20MB of RAM free on boot up, that's criminal.

Hell, I could probably get over all of those problems if it had more RAM. But my shift to the Touch has been a nice switch, with unlimited data and a full screen keyboard it's pretty functional. Plus, on boot I have 70MB of RAM free, it is so much faster.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the Mogul, it has a HUGE community of very helpful people that make it an excellent device, it just has too many shortcomings that I couldn't overlook.

Cheers!

[Flashpoint @ Mar 10th 2008 10:09AM]

From September 07' till now, SPRINT's stock has been sinking like a stone.

Sprint is DOOMED. And those bastuds are taking Nextel down with em.

Ever since Sprint joined Nextel, Nextel hasn't seen a singlee phone worth having released. I knew it was downhill for them when I saw Sprint releasing the ic model phones. They are ever losing their market share to T-Mobile and Verizon with AT&T climbing the ranks thanks to the iphone.

DEATH TO SPRINT and their overcharging, crappy network bullsh*t.

[uofirob @ Mar 10th 2008 10:20AM]

Look up SERO.

I have the HTC touch, the SERO plan, I pay $37 a month for 500 minutes, unlimited nights& weekends at 7, unlimited data, unlimited texting and unlimited Sprint/nextel to sprint/nextel and I have the replacement plan.

I haven't had problems with dropped calls or anything since switching, where I had calls drop when I had T-mobile (it might have just been the razr... but still).

So yeah. There are phones that are worthwhile on sprint, especially if you make use of that data plan.

[JerryA @ Mar 10th 2008 10:45AM]

Overcharging? Are you kidding me? I pay $15/month for unlimited EVDO. How much do you pay AT&T for that? Verizon? I believe it's closer to $40-45 for those guys. Not to mention the fact that they let the NSA and other spooks illegally tap our phones. I'm not sure what was so great about Nextel either. All their phones looked like big clunky walkie talkies and were always running last year's models before the buyout. All I hear when I call a Nextel phone is "please hold while the Nextel subscriber you are trying to reach is located". Can't even find their own phones ;)

I don't want to come off as a fanboy because Sprint has made mistakes with my plan before but it's pretty rare and they always have fixed it. I just can't see paying anyone else 2 or 3 times as much for slower data. My total non-SERO bill is only like $60/mo with more minutes than I use and more text than I use and unlimited data which I use frequently.

[OneLove @ Mar 10th 2008 12:46PM]

I wouldn't say sprint is the best, but ATT is the worst of all.

[Jack @ Mar 10th 2008 3:33PM]

Overcharging network? Now you're showing your stupidity Flashpoint. Sprint's pricing plans are one of their draws. It's customer service that has caused them the customer loss, and they are trying to fix that.

[Jeff @ Mar 10th 2008 5:02PM]

I'll agree Sprin't handset lineup is pretty awful, but "overcharging"

They've got some of the best rates in the industry, especially when you start looking at data.

[trix @ Mar 10th 2008 5:17PM]

fail.

i pay $20/mo for SERO, 500 min, unlimited everything else (convinced Sprint to tack on -$10/mo). and i've had the mogul on rev A since Jan.

i friggin love sprint. my wallet especially loves sprint.

[boe @ Mar 10th 2008 10:11AM]

Does this include WM 6.1?

[prnorm @ Mar 10th 2008 10:54AM]

no...

[boe @ Mar 10th 2008 11:11AM]

prnorm, thanks for replying. Are you serious? I'm running WM 6.1 on my touch and it works very well but I don't have rev A or a functioning GPS.

[prnorm @ Mar 10th 2008 11:20AM]

well, i actually haven't tried the new official rom myself yet, but according to dcd at xda-developers the new rom just has a new build of wm6 -- WM6.0, aku 0.4.8.

however, there are a few custom roms out there for the titan that run wm6.1 beautifully.

[PhilR8 @ Mar 10th 2008 12:44PM]

Wait a few days and you'll see custom WM 6.1 roms based on this new update.

[boe @ Mar 10th 2008 1:23PM]

Thanks for the info - I appreciate it.

[trix @ Mar 10th 2008 5:22PM]

Wait a week or so, and grab a clean install of WM6.1 and the new rom from DCD from here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=384

[inlwatkins @ Mar 10th 2008 10:19AM]

The RAM limitations was a big part of why I sold my Mogul and got the Touch. I used X-Button but still had problems. Heres hoping they update the touch too!!!

[trix @ Mar 10th 2008 5:46PM]

wktask does exactly what x-button can do but with less of a ram footprint.

[Jesse Nicholson @ Mar 10th 2008 10:33AM]

It DOES include GPS capabilites....Sprint has confirmed http://forums.buzzaboutwireless.com/baw/board/message?board.id=SmartPhones&thread.id=3488

[NNTPgrip @ Mar 10th 2008 11:16AM]

Maybe it will make it not crash in bad signal areas(unresponsive, hard crash requiring soft reset). That ticked me off so bad. Of course, there is no fixing windows mobile. Only had this monster for 2 months, before the iPhone. EVDO Rev. A is nice, but Sprint's coverage is garbage with this data network compared to Verizon. We've got 25 aircards with Sprint, and 4 with Verizon, when our contract goes out, we're going back to Verizon for all.

[keovani @ Mar 10th 2008 11:21AM]

Boe...where did you get the 6.1 update to work on your touch?

[boe @ Mar 10th 2008 1:29PM]

ppcgeeks.com - it isn't official yet - usually takes far too long to get any firmware from Sprint/HTC and the stuff they released is usually not working very well either. Of course anything that you get from another source than Sprint probably voids any warranties for support - HA HA HA - as if you could get support from them. I've yet to ever talk to a rep at Sprint who has actually touched any of their PDA phones.

[Flashpoint-mocker @ Mar 10th 2008 11:29AM]

Since i'm a moron named flashpoint who doesn't know how to stick to a topic and I offer no substance to the subject.

The iphone sucks. Simple as that. Even if you unlock the pos, the only other crappy gsm service is t-mobile. att and tmobile are both of the crapiest networks around. death to the iphone you sheeple-fanbois.

[ScOObyDoo @ Mar 10th 2008 11:34AM]

Sorry, but as an iPhone AND Mogul owner I can hardly say the iPhone sucks. When I'm at home I prefer using the iPhone simply because it does everything 10 times better than the mogul.

When I'm away from home I'll use the mogul for its push email and the 3G. But several times a week I'll actually use wmwifirouter on the mogul just so I can get 3G on the iPhone.

On the mogul I press the IE button, and 10 seconds later it will be open. On the iPhone I press "safari" and it's there. Instantly.

[Zzephyr @ Mar 10th 2008 12:38PM]

Nice trick, scooby

[trix @ Mar 10th 2008 5:17PM]

uhhh scooby, try opera mini. I've got mine starting up in 6 secs and its far superior to IE.

[LordJohnWhorfin @ Mar 10th 2008 11:31AM]

As of 8:30PST the firmware available is still the old November Rev-0 version, 2.17.

[paultakeda @ Mar 10th 2008 11:38AM]

You are not looking hard enough. ;)

http://download.america.htc.com/RUU_TITAN_SPRINT_WWE_3.35.651.2_RS_TITAN_3.35.04_4350H_SPCS_AM_Ship.exe

[ScOObyDoo @ Mar 10th 2008 11:38AM]

It's here:

http://download.america.htc.com/RUU_TITAN_SPRINT_WWE_3.35.651.2_RS_TITAN_3.35.04_4350H_SPCS_AM_Ship.exe

[paultakeda @ Mar 10th 2008 11:39AM]

Ha! By seconds! :D

[LordJohnWhorfin @ Mar 10th 2008 11:42AM]

Thanks Paul!

[matt @ Mar 10th 2008 12:52PM]

what about any other phones? what's the rollout schedule?

[marky-b @ Mar 10th 2008 11:56AM]

after having threaded txt's with the leaked wm6.1 titan rom, i dont know if i can go back to an official wm6.0 sprint rom..

Little things like that do it for me, i guess.

[Nick @ Mar 10th 2008 12:23PM]

im fairly confused as to how gps was enabled in a firmware update. Was the reciever in there the whole time, just not being used by the software? That must be it.

[Loren Sonnenberg @ Mar 10th 2008 12:31PM]

Yes - it always had hardware gps - it just wasn't activated in the software until now.

[Loren @ Mar 10th 2008 12:30PM]

Does anyone who has already upgraded know if this update fixes the mogul's bluetooth / video driver problems?

[OneLove @ Mar 10th 2008 12:51PM]

what about the lock ups they are driving me crazy, and yes I have 2.17 rom

[trix @ Mar 10th 2008 5:49PM]

DCD's 2.2.0 rom was near perfect. ZERO lockups for me. grab it at xda-developers.

[Sly Raskal @ Mar 10th 2008 12:34PM]

Have any of you applied the update that Scooby and Paul listed above?

I want to update my Mogul, but want to see if others have done it yet in case there are any problems.

[ScOObyDoo @ Mar 10th 2008 1:18PM]

Yes I have. Speed is better, but not "blazing". The dslreports mobile speed test shows me around 850.

GPS on the other hand is impressive. I get a quick lock INSIDE behind a window/curtains. Compared to the leaked GPS in the rom it's a huge improvement. It's still off by around 50 feet.

There is no Sprint TV. You do get Telenav and of course the crappy Sprint software and music store.

No threaded SMS of course since it's WM6.0.