From time to time I search to see if Verizon has gotten the sand out of their vag when it comes to locking down the GPS features in their phones.  They haven’t–or so I thought.

I did reread the threads on hacking GPS into your XV6800 and again decided against it because I’m too lazy.

Instead of giving up, I started up a chat session with Verizon’s online support to see if they had any answers.  Well the planets must be aligned because it turns out they did.

This is probably old news to some, but I stopped checking after the first page of results for “xv6800 gps”.

According to Verizon’s online support, they will be unlocking GPS via a firmware update due out in January of 2009–so… next month! Woo.

Here is part of the transcript:

cory: I own the XV6800 and know that it contains some GPS functionality. Sprint has released a firmware update to enable this functionality. Does vzw have plans to open up GPS in the future? If so, when?
Latavious: Thanks for holding Cory. In January 2009 all window mobile phones will be entitled to the firmware. Including our choices of the window mobile phones.
cory: Does that mean the firmware will exist for all phones but vzw will choose which ones it wants to make available?
Latavious: Correct. The window mobile phones.

If this is true, I will be a much happier Verizon customer… which still isn’t very happy.  Unlock my damn phone entirely you d-bags!