Motorola phones have plenty of detractors, but one great thing about them is that they are the most hackable of all mobiles. I’m talking about the good kind of hacking, figuring out the secrets of hardware and software and making it work better.
Unlike most phones which require special expensive hardware to update the firmware, with Motorolas all that’s needed is software and an ordinary data cable. There’s also free software available to extract, modify and replace almost any file in the phone’s filesystem. As a result of this relative openness, there’s a big Motorola hacking community which has collectively figured out how to enable phone features that have been disabled by Motorola or by the carriers. If you want to use Bluetooth to do file OBEX transfers or make you phone vibrate first and then ring these features can be enabled by flipping a few bits in the phone’s firmware, a so called “SEEM” edit. The onerous “security” restrictions on un-signed Java applications that block Java access to the GPS and throw up constant nag screens in Opera Mini can be defeated by modifying a configuration file. The knowledge is out there and the community is willing to share it on several Motorola themed web forums.
One of the best of the Motorola hacking sites is HackTheRAZR.com which specializes in the iconic thin RAZR phone. I just discovered HackTheRazr’s mobile site (wap.hacktherazr.com) which unlike so many dumbed down, limited content mobile web sites, features virtually everything found on the full PC HackTheRazr site. The most valuable parts of HackTheRAZR are the Guides, tutorials on how to configure your hacking toolset and get started customizing you phone, and the forums where the latest discoveries are shared and questions are asked and often answered. The mobile site also has images and videos to download and a mobile web directory.
Standard disclaimer: hacking your phone will void the manufacturer’s waranty and can result in a “bricked” phone!
wap.hacktherazr.com (cHtml) Content: 
Usability: 
The site was down for almost 2 weeks while we tried to retrieve the site files from the hard drive of the server, of which got hacked and destroyed. Had to actually perform data recovery on the hard drive to get all the files and database files back…
the site is back up, however, we are temporarily not offering the free WAP service as we strive to figure out a more permanent, and safe, solution for everybody. also, we are looking at re-doing the media section and have temporarily removed that, we still have all the same files that have been uploaded by users, we’re just looking at re-doing the system to manage the media.
Thank you everyone for your continued support, and thank you very much Dennis of wapreview.com for your review of the site. We are continually trying to build the site and make it more and more useful for razr hackers.
The site is not down anymore, but I would hardly say it’s up, either. The Guides are gone; the forum is gone; nothing recognizable from the old site is there. …and nothing I find useful, either.
Speculation: someone (Motorola? Verizon?) got control of the domain name and neutered it.
HackTheRazr.com is down and so is their wap proxy. If anyone knows of any other free wap setups let me know (I tried the Google trick and it doesn’t let you go to specific websites). I’d rather not set up my own proxy since my computer is always off when I’m not on it.
Yes that’s a good site. Others are hackthev3i.com and hacktheiphone.com.
Unlocked RAZRs have been so great to own and use on a daily basis for me because there are so “hackable”. But I wonder if the pending release in January of hardware that support Google’s Android maybe be the new “most hackable” phone in town.
Will you write reviews about OpenMoko and Android here on this blog?