Verizon had promised last year that it would enable the use of GPS on select Windows Mobile phones in 2009, and today it announced that its firmware version 1.08 update for the HTC Touch Pro will indeed allow GPS. It doesn’t appear it’ll be able to be used completely indiscriminately though. From what PhoneNews is reporting that it has tested the GPS with Google Maps and Windows Live Search for Mobile and it works well, though it also works with all Windows Mobile GPS apps.
The update will also provide visual voicemail (for $3 per month) and EVRC-B voice calling codec support. The latter is part of Qualcomm’s fourth generation voice codecs which provide better support for voice calling on highly trafficked networks.
The next handsets up for GPS support on the Verizon network are the Samsung Saga and Samsung Omnia. You can always try out this hack for other Verizon phones if you don’t want to wait.
