Debranding a C902 from Vodafone turns out to be easy and free.

Firstly, you’ll need a piece of software call A2Uploader, and an XML file to fool Ericsson’s update service into thinking your phone is unbranded. Click here for the copy I made and used. Then you simply use SEUS to flash your firmware to the latest version, saying yes to all the warning about possible data loss.

I was a bit put off by the fact that my AVG anti-virus warned me that A2Upoader contined a Trojan. It didn’t, so to get it to run I had to turn off the residnt shield within AVG. Then you just follow the prompts like this:

1. Turn off your phone, take out the battery, re-insert the battery (don’t turn the phone back on)
2. Fire up A2Upoader, click “File System Tool” on the right, hold the “C” button on your phone and plug in the USB cable. A2Uploader should then recognise your handset.
3. Use A2Uploader to browse your phone to “tpa/preset/custom” and copy the XML file onto your phone.
4. Shut down A2Uploader, disconeect the USB cable from the phone, and switch it back on.

You can now use the Sony Ericsson Update Service and get the latest firmware. The Sony Ericsson firmware, not the Vodafone stuff.

Having done this, my phone is:

1) running much faster
2) has a decent battery indicator
3) much nicer icons in the main menu
4) hasn’t got 50 shortcuts to Vodafone Live! that I can’t change (I hate that)

You can also use A2Uploader to get rid of the awful pre-installed games, and any media files (ringtones, pictures etc) that you can’t normally remove using the phone. Great!

I thought it might be an idea to show a couple of pictures of the debranded c902. A bit tricky to get the phone to take a picture of itself, so I asked Tony if he could take a picture using his iPhone. And here it is:
Turns out the iPhone camera is, to be frank, absolute rubbish so you probably can’t read what’s on the phone. Even funnier, I asked Tony to bluetooth the image over to me once he’d taken it, and he told me he couldn’t – the iPhone can’t transmit files via Bluetooth. Pathetic eh?

Just for the sake of fairness, I took a quick shot of his iPhone with my c902, see if you can spot the differences in image quality:Both images were taken indoors, with poor lighting and no setting camera options to anything other than default. I’m horrified the iPhone has such a crap camera, and is incapable of sending files via Bluetooth particularly as it’s so incredibly expensive.

Unfortunately, I have also had problems with this handset. Within two weeks of getting it, it died. Switching it on just resulted in the camera button lighting up, but the phone itself refused to start at all. Returned it to Vodafone, and they reinstalled the firmware. This seemed to fix the issue, but then today it did exactly the same thing again. Not wanting to send it off for repair yet again, I tried overwriting the firmware using the Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS). It seemed to work, akthough I am still stuck with the rather awful Vodafone branded firmware that they insist on installing on it. I have asked Vodfone directly if they would be willing to put the Ericsson firmware on it (I’d be happy to pay a reasonable amount) but they say they simply won’t do that. Bad show I say – I’ve been a Vodafone customer for almost a decade now and really do think this is pretty tight fisted of them. I’m sure the phone would be more stable with Ericsson firmware, and would REALLY like to be able to delete some of the awful stuff they’ve installed on it such as the bad collection of games. They’re all demos installed just to attempt to get me to make a purchase. Every other phone I’ve ever had, right back to my Nokia 3310, came with at least one full game installed. The fact they’ve allocated two shortcuts that I can’t edit to Vodafone Live is a bit of a niggle as well. They’ve also instisted on hard coding the homepage of the web browser as their own website. that totally sucks – even Microsoft haven’t got the sheer cheek to hardwire the homepage of their web browser.

Overall, a great phone, with awful firmware if you’re on Vodafone.