Palm Pre Hacked For Verizon Network [Video]

One enterprising Palm Pre owner has hacked his smartphone to run on Verizon's network, rather than Sprint's.  "cleanser" of the PreCentral forums has managed to get both voice and text messaging to work as expected, but so far data access is presenting a problem.

The hack involved attempting to persuade a Verizon Wireless customer services' rep to add the MEID – the electronic serial number and unique identifier of the handset – to cleanser's account with them.  Once that had been done, the network accepted the Pre as just another CDMA phone.

Video demo after the cut

"Only problem is that I can't get data to work. Apparently webOS is checking to see if the device is provisioned or not before allowing a data session to take place. So my next step would be to somehow bypass this provisioning check."

What remains, it seems, is either persuading the Pre that Verizon's network is just as valid for data access as Sprint's is, or bypassing the check altogether.  There's talk of packet-sniffing being used to identify any unique communication which authenticates Sprint's servers, but so far it seems hackers will be limited to voice and data with these unofficial Verizon Pre's.