The QTek 8500 definitely isn’t a cutting edge WMS anymore. Its manufacturer HTC devised the box as a RAZR-killer, built millions of them and couldn’t sell them at the original, insane list price. The device eventually cost about 100€ OTC…which motivated hackers to develop and deploy literally hundreds of custom ROM’s.

HTC never intended to update the WM 5 device to WM6 or even WM 6.1: but the boys at xda-developers actually managed to create WM 6.1 ROMs before the box actually hit the road. Now that the dust has settled, reliable WM 6 and WM 6.1 ROMs are available. I decided to take a WM 6.1 Standard one created by erofich for a test drive.

The installation instructions have been covered in our Windows Mobile 6 for QTek 8500 post – the installation of WM 6.1 goes along the same lines.

WM 6.1 works very well on the device – here is a shot showing the operating system in action:
0a Windows Mobile 6.1 for QTek 8500

Unfortunately, the amount of free memory on the device is very low (much lower than on other ROM’s). If you can live with about 14MB of storage and 30MB of RAM (I can), you can update without worries:
1a Windows Mobile 6.1 for QTek 8500 1b Windows Mobile 6.1 for QTek 8500

The new features definitely make your life easier – threaded SMS, the new home screen and the improved Internet Explorer really save time. Small improvements like Cut&Paste close the feature gap between touchscreened and touchscreenless phones.

In the end, WM 6.1 works very well. While the lack of memory and the somewhat slow-ish OMAP CPU can’t be compensated with a ROM update, Erofich’s ROM definitely prolongs the life of HTC’s flip phones…


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  3. THROWAWAY: QTek 8500 screen protector
  4. The Proporta Alu-Leather Case for QTEK 8500
  5. The Brando silicone case for Qtek 8500