Email response from Jerry Adriano (Sprint's VP of Customer Experience)

[TalynOne]

Please, excuse the horrible grammar, and spelling of my original email. I wrote it late at night, and reading it back now, I'm pretty embarrassed.

My email (with grammar/spelling errors, ):

You cell a phone called the HTC Mogul. It's you're
flagship business smartphone. The latest update broke
more than it fixed (freezing when going in and out of
roaming area, DPad failing to work unless the phone is
reset, Bluetooth shutting off for no reason). It was
so bad that the update had to be recalled. Also,
Sprint promised a Rev A data upgrade for the phone by
fall 2007, now Sprint says the soonest ANY update
will come is 1st quarter 2008. Also this phone does
not have enough RAM on it (64MB instead of 128MB)
causing a lot of users to have to reset the phone
several times a day to be able to run their
applications properly.

Because of the broken promises, and broken phone. Many
people are jumping ship or trying to trade in to other
phones via retentions. The closest phone to the Mogul,
the HTC Touch, is not an option for some of us
business users since Sprint took out the WiFi feature.
And some of us require a keyboard, another reason why
the Touch may not be an option.

With so many people jumping ship or moving to other
phones via returns/trades in, and with the cost of
these support calls Sprint has to deal with, it seems
to me, it would be MUCH cheaper for Sprint to just pay
the HTC folks (makers of the phone) a little extra to
rush a ROM update that fixes the radio freezing,
Bluetooth, and DPad problems of the latest ROM.

The response:

Thank you for being a Sprint customer. I apologize for the problems that
you have encountered with the recent update.

We appreciate the feedback and I have shared it with our team that is
responsible for our handsets and products. We are actively working
with HTC to address the problems with the upgrade issues and should
have a timeframe this week. We are also looking at other enhancements with
HTC, including your suggestion on the ROM In the interim, we are
suggesting that those who upgraded revert back to the previous version,
which you may have already done. We are considering texting all of the
customers that upgraded and recommending that they go to
http://www.america.htc.com/support/m...downloads.html and
going back to the prior version. The EVDO Rev A/GPS upgrade will enter
our lab in early December and is scheduled for commercial release in
January. Although this is later than expected, it appears to be on
track for launch. Our handset team has indicated that the next
generation of the Mogul and Touch will have 128MB of RAM and that for
the current version there are some memory management tips that have
helped some customers.

One of the recommendations that I have made to our handset team is to
be
more proactive in directly communicating to our customers about what we
are doing to address the issues. They are trying to determine the most
effective way.
Regards,
Jerry

Great...but its the same regurgitated crap we always here.

[dmackdaddy]

Sounds like they won't be able to fix the current Mogul memory issues and they will be selling a 2.0 version that has the right memory allocation. If that's the case, then the real fix would be to hold out or complain to Sprint if/when this new Mogul comes out with the added RAM.

[TalynOne]

It's interesting that more specific dates of beginning of December for testing, and January for release of GPS/Rev A are given. Before it was more of beginning /early of 2008, which could mean something like March. I put more stock in it than a response from a customer service peon, since it's from a VP, but we'll let time decide.

[Pibe38]

No offense, I think it's cool you got a response from a VP.

However, Early 2008/Q1 2008 could mean January 2008, so it really is the same answer being given. I agree with you too, it could also mean March 2008... but that answer is hardly news.

I know I shouldn't say this because I'll open a can of worms... but the only new thing would be the GPS comment about the update, although there are already rumors about it. But I will not believe on GPS until I actually see it and I have decided not to weigh in on GPS arguments anymore since they all end up badly.

[TalynOne]

I agree, because of Sprint's track record on promises I'm not accepting anything until I see it, but I think it's good to have as much information as possible going forward. If nothing else this can be used as ammunition for trade ins/returns if a proper update doesn't materialize by the end of January.

[TC1]

Actually, that email is very helpful (if authentic). He admits that the next ROM will fix the current GPS issues. This is good news, I'll explain:

I've spent 4 days of solid research into hacking the A-GPS capabilities on the Mogul. As I've described in other threads, every modern phone has A-GPS built into it... the only problem is that the carriers don't want the consumer using it without paying a monthly fee. A talented developer by the name of Cristian Streng wrote a Java app called Mobile GMaps, this application uses Java calls to the QJAE GPS API (Qualcomm) on most Sprint phones to access the internal A-GPS system and use the coordinates from the system to display your location on a mapping source of your choice (it works with Yahoo, MSN, etc. maps). I've loaded this software on my wife's LG Fusic (after hacking/unlocking the developer's root certificate) and it's freakin awesome. She basically now has free GPS capabilities without needing an external device or clear sight of the overhead satellites.

When Sprint caught wind of this they made veiled threats at Cristian (google Mobile GMAPS and Sprint and you'll see), obviously because they no longer had the stranglehold on the user's wallet.

Ok... so what does this have to do with the Mogul? Well, when I tried to load the app onto the Mogul, there is a problem accessing the QJAE GPS API, I get error messages saying access to the API is denied. One of two things are going on here:

1. I've read on some developer's forums that Sprint locked down the API on WM phones really tight, requiring developers to pay a licensing fee to get an application cert that will unlock it.

or

2. They simply left the API/driver out. I suspect this is the reason since I don't believe you can get TeleNav or other related LBS (location based services) on the Mogul at the moment.

It kind of sounds like this next ROM will either unlock the API or finally include it.

What would really be awesome is if I can get some savvy Touch user to try mGMAPS to see if maybe Sprint included the unlocked API on that ROM. If it works then more than likely we could build a ROM for the Mogul that would unlock A-GPS for the end-user.

[JNILSEN21871]

jutried the generic and the sprint version my touch beeps and just shows a all white page

[dmackdaddy]

Our handset team has indicated that the *next* generation of the Mogul and Touch will have 128MB of RAM and that for the current version there are some memory management tips that have helped some customers.

I think you guys are missing this point. Emphasis on the words "next". As in all of us current owners are screwed!!!

[TC1]

Originally Posted by JNILSEN21871

jutried the generic and the sprint version my touch beeps and just shows a all white page

Does the application compile and run? You won't be able to load the app directly from the WAP page, and more than likely you'll need another Java midlet to load and run it. Attached is the one I used, unzip it on your desktop, copy the cab over to your phone, run the cab. You'll also need the seperate .JAR and .JAD files for mGMAPS, download them to your desktop and copy to your phone.

Then run the Esmertec Jbed app, use it to install the mGMAPS .JAR file. Then try launching the mGMAPS app from the Esmertec Jbed.

Thanks for trying this.