Official Windows Mobile 6 rom available for the Cingular 8525

(image from mdhenly5)

Ah, finally, att / htc has released the windows mobile 6 rom for the cingular 8525!

Download link from HTC:  http://www.america.htc.com/support/8525/software-downloads.html
Direct link to the rom:  http://download.america.htc.com/RUU_…
Discussions about the rom over at xda-developers.com:  http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=340987

I have yet to install it myself, (yay classes!), but will update this post once I do — It seems as though some people are saying it’s actually the old rom, so lets hope for the best!

UPDATE:  I just installed it, and at first glance, there isn’t much difference from the previous "unofficial" official wm6 rom release back in July…

After installing however, I did notice that startup time is a LITTLE bit faster (enough to notice the difference).  This new rom also fixed the issue I was having with wifi not working correctly — what would happen is that I would be connected to my router, have an ip address and everything, but could not actually "get to" anything (internet explorer would just get stuck on "locating" for any page I tried to go to) — but now w/this newer rom, it works fine!

The resulting memory capacities (upon first boot after upgrade) are as follows:

Storage:

• Total:  44.77 MB
• In Use:  11.01 MB
• Free:  33.77 MB

Program:

• Total:  48.77 MB
• In use:  21.14 MB
• Free:  27.63 MB

After uninstalling the Microsoft QuickStart Tutorial, Cingular Get Xpress Mail, and GravityMobile MusicID (more about this below), I get 34.59 MB free storage.  

Speaking of MusicID, this is the only ‘new’ thing I have been able to find, and what it appears to be is a pay-for program that can tell you what song you are listening to (intersting…).  What you are supposed to do is hold the phone up to the speaker, or whatever music source you have, and it will detect and figure out what song it is!  Neat idea, but I could NEVER see my self paying for something like this! 

However, like the ‘unofficial’ official wm6 release, I am still having the problem where media player will not work correctly when ‘updating library’ from a storage card.  When I update the library, select Storage Card for the library, then click on "My Music" then "all music" I get a Windows Media "An unexpected error occurred" — is anyone else getting this error?

UPDATE 6:00p:  Ah, I finally found out what the error was (again, google was my friend!), as walshieau posted over at xda-developers,

you have to delete the MSMETADATA, WMDRM Folders and WmpInfo.xml from your SD card…. that will fix your problem

I did that, and media player now works as it should!

Oh, and to get rid of the annoyingly loud start up 3g-whoosh-animation sound when you start the phone, download a smartphone registry editing program, such as total commander (free and much better than the built in file manager), and do as crgan says over at htcwiki.com which is to change the follow registry entry:

HKLMSOFTWAREHTCStartupAnimation
Enabled – change from 1 to 0 to turn everything off and permanently fix the volume issue.

Now, restart your phone, and no more annoying startup sound or animation!