A few days ago I submitted three email addresses for invitations.  I got two invitations last night, and interesting the one that didn’t get the invite was my gmail account.  Everything works the same anyway. Here’s a screenshot walkthrough of the setup experience.

After I clicked the invitation link in my email and signed in with my gmail account.  I was presented with this screen.

I clicked “Choose a number,” and I was presented with the main interface and an overlay with setup options.

Here I fiddled around until I got a good phone number.

The next step was to put in my existing cell phone number so that when people call my Google Voice number they get me.

The next step has Google Voice call my phone.
 

*ring ring* “Verifying your phone…” stayed on until I answered my phone and input the number.  The call was from my Google Voice number.
 

Success!  My impression of Google Voice has been very positive so far.  I’ll post more about it as I discover.

You know to which infrastructure your phone is connected by a symbol at the top of the screen.  "EV" means EVDO, while "1X" means CDMA.  (I think the 1 also implies the version of CDMA, but that’s over my head.)   By default the phone connects to EVDO if it is available, otherwise it will connect to CDMA.  The goal of this tutorial is to make the phone prefer CDMA over EVDO.  Doing so shouldn’t have any effect on the performance of calls, though downloads through Get it Now would probably be slower.

So let’s get to it!

First, you need to put your phone in debug mode.  This is done by typing "##DEBUG" ("##33284") into the phone as if you were making a call.  You have to be quick about it.  You know that it worked if the final digit, 4, isn’t displayed.  Upon typing "##DEBUG", the phone should look like this: 

Now you can get in to the FTS menu.  I don’t know what "FTS" stands for, but it allows you to change some settings in the phone that aren’t usually accessible.

To get into the FTS menu, now that you are in debug mode, press "CLR" and then the left soft button.  Pressing that combination at any time will get you in and out of the FTS menu.  Note that you do not hold "CRL" while pressing the left soft button.
 

Now press the right soft button ("NEXT") until you arrive at the screen that lists "HDR Pref" on it.
 

Now press the down button until "HDR Pref" is selected.  Notice that "PREV" and "NEXT" have changed to "EXIT" and "CHANGE".

Press the right soft button ("CHANGE") until "HDR Pref" is set to "cdma".

Press the left soft button ("EXIT").  The phone will be unresponsive for about 15 seconds.  Eventually the screen will show the FTS screen briefly, display another screen, and then then settle on a final screen.  I can only assume this is the phone restarting.

Now you just have to get out of the FTS menu and disable debug mode.

To get out of the FTS menu, press "CLR" and then the left soft button.  Now that you’re back at the home screen, notice that the "EV" symbol at the top of the screen changed to "1X". 

The way you get out of debug mode is the same way you got in.  Just type ##DEBUG from the home screen.  Make sure that debug mode is disabled by pressing "CLR" and then the left soft button.  If you don’t see the FTS screen, you’ve done it right.

You’re done.

First, I click on the network icon in the system tray.

Next I click on “Connect to a network”, and I see this window:

Next I click on “Razr Net Access”. and click connect.  So I see the next screen.

I wait a few seconds, and that’s it!  I have access to internet that, while slow, is still twice as fast as dial-up, and it only costs minutes on my cell phone.  The best part is that when calls are free, so is the internet access, meaning “surf’s up” on nights and weekends.  Also, while I can not initiate calls, I can still recieve calls normally wile connected.

There.  In four clicks I’m connected to the net.  How is this possible?  Well, it took some initial hacking of my Motorola Razr V3m that I got from Verizon.  Some of the steps in setting it up initially can get a little complicated, but since the end result is so elegant (and free) I don’t mind.  In a later post I’ll explain how to set this up.