[HOWTO] Social Beat (facebook/twitter/myspace/etc) & other unsupported apps

Great news, everyone!

I have Social Beat (a Facebook/Gmail/Twiiter/MySpace/more application) working on the enV touch for free! You'll obviously need a data plan (or risk incurring charges), but the download is from Verizon, and works with minimal glitches.

Verizon, as you may know, gives away this application for free on many other devices- but the enV touch is 'incompatible'. In order to download the app, all we have to do is trick Verizon's app store into believing we have a compatible device.

We'll use the service menu to do this, so the usual disclaimer applies: I'm not responsible for anything you break. It's all on your shoulders.

1) Enter the service menu, by dialing ##PROGRAM11000 and hitting send.
2) Enter your service code, which is almost always 000000 (six zeroes.)
(Be careful here! Don't change anything except what this guide indicates, unless you really know what you're doing.)
3) Select 'Media Center settings'.
4) Select 'platform ID'.
5) We're going to enter the platform ID for the original enV, so type in only the number 1145.
6) Hit save. Your phone will restart automatically.

Now, go to 'Media Center' and select 'Browse and Download'. The media center will now think your phone is an original enV, so you should be able to find and download Social Beat.

7) (In Media Center, Browse and Download:) Select 'Get New Applications'. Social Beat should be listed amongst the first apps. Download it- it's free!

This should theoretically work for any application the enV Touch won't support.

If you want (and you probably should) to set the platform ID back to the correct value for the enV touch, follow the above instructions, but replace 1145 with 1291, (or your original value if you had something different.)

I've only tested this on V5 firmware, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work on the others.

There may be additional platform IDs that support other sets of software; if I run into any others that work I'll post them.

Happy hacking!

KNOWN ISSUES/WORKAROUNDS:

-The touchscreen obviously isn't supported. You can view the program(s) on the external screen, but you'll need to use the internal screen to interact with them.
-The Social Beat application likes to put asterisks before your username and password. Don't delete these until after you've entered the first letter of your password, or they'll keep coming back.

Social Beat is Verizon's Facebook/Myspace/Twitter/Gmail/Google Talk/RSS client; it allows you access to all of the above without using a web browser in a more streamlined interface. It also supposedly allows 'push'-style notifications of new messages on the above services, but I'm not sure if those work on the enV touch.

Just tried this, it works! This is definitely a great find! The asterisks are definitely annoying, as they show up in any text entry field, but the fact that this app includes free email, along with a facebook/twitter client makes up for that by far. This app really makes up for my only complaint about the phone. Hopefully a version for the Touch will come out in the near future, but until then, this will do the trick. Thank you!

You haven't found that changing the platform id number will delete any app already on the phone that isn't compatible with the older platform id for the enV?

This hasn't happened to any of the devices I've tested this on, and I'm pretty sure it won't happen at all, and here's why:

What I'm changing is just the platform ID reported to Media Center/Get it Now. It doesn't affect the device's internal BREW platform ID. Rather, this is just the number Verizon uses to keep track of phone model.

As always, no promises.

[Edit: If you're worried, back up your brew folder using bitpim. Then you're safe no matter what.]

my phone isn't going to the menu, it's actually dialing the "number"


EDIT:  yeah...I had a typo.  My bad!!  


EDIT2.0:  With the LG Voyager it actually erases the existing apps everytime you switch the platform ID.  so I look forward to try it out tomorrow for real once my replacement env Touch arrives.

Has anyone else given this a try??

thnks

so after you changed your ID back, your apps weren't deleted?