Ever since I was introduced to flashing custom ROMs on Windows Mobile by Brym ( see his articles, My Experience with Flashing ROMs, and Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMs Everywhere), I have flashed at least 13 different ROms on my X1.

At first, I was fascinated with the prospects of having my version 6.1 device updated to version 6.5, so I played with version 6.5 ROMs from the beginning. However, it did not take me long to find out that as good as some of them are, they were not so stable.

My X1 is primarilly a worktool, and fairly frequent crashes and freezes were out of the question for me. I also noticed that video recordings on almost all 6.5 ROMs I tried out was not as good as on the stock ROM.

The result was that I began to hunt for the most stable custom ROMs, and found that version 6.1 ROMs were what I should be exploring. Having tried a couple of them on the recommendation of the active community at the XDA Developers forum, I have found that the most stable, and the one I have come to keep is the version 6.1 ROM by Smaberg, Touch X 10.1 ULTIMATE X-TREME “FINAL”.

Video recording works well. It has TouchFlo 3D built-in, touch friendly menus, good user interface performance, and fine reception. While it does not have some of the extra bells and whistles of the version 6.5 ROMs, it works very well and keeps me happy.

If you own an X1, you cannot go wrong with Touch X 10.1. Screenshots below.

My successful experience in hacking and installing Mods on my UIQ device sometime last year inspired me and gave me the boldness to try out Windows Mobile hacking. I have been on the WinMo platform twice in the past but never dared tweaking, modding or flashing ROMS on my devices.

The big fear of hacking and installing (flashing) ROMs on your device is the possibility of bricking it and rendering it completely useless. In our climes, this fear is bigger because WinMo devices are very expensive and there are no WinMo service centres to fix a bricked device. In my case, I chose to use an old HTC Wizard running Windows Mobile 5 (which I got for free) as my guinea pig.

Following a series of steps carefully outlined on the XDA Developers site (the haven of WinMO ROM flashing), I was able to prepare my device for flashing ROMs by CID unlocking it.

What is CID? CID stands for Carrier ID and devices come with either a carrier or manufacturer’s ROM. To enable flashing of ROMs other than your carrier’s ROMs you have to CID unlock your device with a software.

Thereafter, you can flash your device with several compatible ROMs. There are so many of them to choose from. The beauty of these “cooked” ROMs is that several irrelevant customised programs are removed while better programs are inserted to optimise performance and user experience on your device.

I installed a WM6.1 ROM successfully but when I tried another WM6.1 ROM, I bricked my device. Did I panic? Yes, big time!

For 2 hours, I desperately looked for a cure on the XDA site and eventually got one that asked me to reflash my device with my default ROM since it was already unlocked. I did just that and I got my device working again.

One good advantage of flashing my old device with WM6 ROMs is that it is now possible to install WM6 applications like Facebook on it.

Below are some screenshots of my HTC Wizard powered by Hornet’s WM6.1 ROM.

Homescreen on Hornet ROM

Start Menu on the Hornet ROM

Facebook application running on Hornet

About Page on the Hornet ROM