The SMT5800 was a smartphone that we really hope would have been a success. It had a revolutionary form-factor that gave the device a true edge in the smartphone arena. HTC’s Libra (aka Vox), which was sold on Verizon as the SMT5800, gave the phone a slide-out keyboard, with a traditional dial pad. This made it a great, thin Windows Mobile offering.
Except that it had horrible firmware. Windows Mobile 6.0, EV-DO Rev 0, and the gpsOne chipset in the phone was totally disabled.
Until, oddly enough, a month ago. PCD quietly released an upgrade fixing all this, but it appears PCD and HTC didn’t want anyone to know about it… neither PCD nor HTC alerted anyone to the release.
So, we’re proud to break the news… a month later… that the SMT5800 is now a good phone. Unfortunately, Windows Mobile 6.1 is a little late, despite HTC finally meeting their commitment to update their phones to 6.1, everyone else is talking in terms of 6.5.3… 6.5 doesn’t even seem to cut it these days. It appears HTC decided to bury this update between the HTC Ozone and Touch Pro 2 upgrades… with zero fanfare.
That said, functionality-wise, the SMT5800 now even handles VZ Navigator. No word yet from users as to if that includes GPS utilization in other applications, similar to other neutered Verizon phones in the past.
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[...] in point is today’s buried failure of the SMT5800. The average eBay value of this phone has fallen below the Motorola RAZR. Why? [...]
This actually came out in January 2009, check the date of the Maintenance Release: http://www.pcdphones.com/phone_downloads.aspx?bid=81&cid=1&mid=292&carrier=Verizon Wireless
Hi Brian, at first we thought this was an error, but we did an investigation following the post.
First, we were correct in being the first member of the mobile media (that we can find) to report on this. We did an exhaustive search… but we won’t rule out that some have discussed this in the past. It certainly was not widely reported.
Specifically, the most we could find pre-dating our reporting was two blog postings discussing the update (on user’s personal blogs) and three or four threads on non-news mobile communities (forums).
Following our article however, several members of the mobile media have confirmed our news as a new development… by citing our reporting.
Further, sites such as PDAdb.net report that the update’s internal release to users date wasn’t until June. Even then, it was not announced by Verizon, HTC, or PCD. We do believe that it did start propagating on servers over a year ago, however.
I think the bottom line of this is that while perhaps the mobile media screwed up in not reporting this… it’s not our job to find this stuff out. HTC, PCD, and/or Verizon should have issued a press release, tweet, announcement or even a simple email to let us know and get the word out. I assure you none of that happened, at least in communications to PhoneNews.com.
The comments in my editorial after this post ring clear; the industry can’t even tell users about updates, how are they supposed to compete with iPhone?