Update: This whole process has been automated and “idiot-proofed” by Rod Whitby on his blog.

Last week, I went to pick up a Palm Pre sans a Sprint contract. The Sprint sales person had no problem selling me a $550 Palm Pre, but it was up to me to “Activate” the device. Sadly, I couldn’t find good step by step instructions on how to do this. The best I could find, still was very confusing because it never explained why I was doing the things it was asking me to do.

So here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to bypass Sprint’s activation for a Palm Pre. Hopefully you can use the webOS Internals tutorial and this to bypass activation. This will enable you to develop apps or use the Palm Pre as a wifi/bt device. Note, you will need to be comfortable with linux command line, tools, and editing files.

First, the goal of this “hack” is to bypass the Sprint Activation but also to enable WiFi so you can create a profile on palm.com without service. We are going to be basically hacking an additional menu item which then brings up the WiFi preferences pane.

1. Download the WebOS image here.
2. Unzip the image to a directory say ~/pre, rename the .jar to .zip if you need to. Remember to move the original file out of ~/pre so you can start over. Also we do not want to include this when we finally rebuild the image.
3. in ~/pre/resources make a new directory webOS/. This lets us untar webOS in a clean directory and rebuild the image easily. directory structure is important when rebuilding the image
4. move ~/pre/resources/webOS.tar to webOS/
5. cd ~/pre/resources/webOS and untar webOS.tar. Delete webOS.tar (so that we don’t include the original file when rebuilding the image)
6. in ~/pre/resources/webOS make a new directory called nova/
7. move ~/pre/resources/webOS/nova-cust-image-castle.rootfs.tar.gz into nova/.
8. cd ~/pre/resources/webOS/nova/ and as root untar nova-cust-image-castle.rootfs.tar.gz doing this as root is important!. Delete nova-cust-image-castle.rootfs.tar.gz
9. If all went well you should now have the webOS image unpacked in ~/pre/resources/webOS/nova. You should also have files in ~/pre/resources/webOS/nova/dev. If you didn’t sudo or missed some steps, you’re doing it wrong. Start over now.
10. all directories are now relative to ~/pre/resources/webOS/nova/. First, lets bypass the activation app. Edit: usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.firstuse/app/controllers/app-assistant.js and replace the body of the setUpFirstUse() function

    function setUpFirstUse () {
      setupSimulator(); 
      isDevice = true; 
    }
    

11. Next, we have to patch the First Use app to bring up the WiFi pref panel. You’re going to need to know a little bit of javascript here, but if you pay attention it should be easy. Edit the file usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.firstuse/app/controllers/firstuse-util.js. Find the function tapHandler, and change the following block of code:

    var labels = [{label: $L('Emergency call'), command: 'emergency-call'},
          {label: $L('Cancel'), command: 'cancel'}
          ];
    

    to

    var labels = [{label: $L('Emergency call'), command: 'emergency-call'},
          {label: $L('Enable WiFi'), command: 'peef-hack-mode'},
          {label: $L('Cancel'), command: 'cancel'}
          ];
    

12. In the same file find the function popupChoose and add another else/if branch to the following block (obviously don’t comment out code):

       if(value == "emergency-call") {
          // code commented out for my safety, don't comment out! 
        } else if (value == "customer-care") {
          // code commented out for my safety, don't comment out
        }
    

    to

       if(value == "emergency-call") {
          // code commented out for my safety, don't comment out
        } else if (value == "customer-care") {
          // code commented out for my safety, don't comment out
        } else if (value == "peef-hack-mode") {
          AppAssistant.accountService.peefMode();
        }
    

13. Next we need to add the function peefMode() to handle our request. In usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.firstuse/app/models/account-service.js, add the following block of code immediately after the Class.create line (near the top):

    peefMode: function() {
      return new Mojo.Service.Request("palm://com.palm.applicationManager/open", {
        parameters: {
          id: 'com.palm.app.wifi',
          params: {}
        }
      });
    },
    

14. Now we’re done adding functions we just need to make sure our image is valid. This means correcting the md5’s of the files we touched. This means take the md5 of usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.firstuse/app/controllers/app-assistant.js, usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.firstuse/app/controllers/firstuse-util.js, usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.firstuse/app/models/account-service.js. In OS X that means running md5 usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.firstuse/app/controllers/app-assistant.js. This will give you a 32 character hash of the file.
15. Edit usr/lib/ipkg/info/com.palm.app.firstuse.md5sums and replace your new md5’s the 3 files above.
16. Now we just need to rebuild the image. If you’ve followed my steps above, in ~/pre/resources/webOS/nova run sudo tar cvpzf ../nova-cust-image-castle.rootfs.tar.gz ./
17. In ~/pre/resources/webOS delete nova/ (rm -rf nova). Now tar up this directory run tar cvf ../webOS.tar ./
18. In ~/pre/resources delete webOS/ (rm -rf webOS).
19. Almost done… in ~/pre/META-INF delete JARKEY.*
20. In ~/pre/META-INF edit MANIFEST.MF and only leave the top 2 lines (ie remove all the SHA-1 hashes in the file)
21. Now, in ~/pre recreated the image by running jar cvMf webosdoctorp100ewwsprint.jar * (some claim you can just use zip, but I’m not sure about this.)
22. Now start the firmware flasher by running java -jar webosdoctorp100ewwsprint.jar, follow the steps up until it asks you to plug in the device.
23. With the device OFF, hold the Volume Up key and plug the device into the machine. Your firmware should start flashing. If your device fails to reboot, just reboot it forcefully by removing the battery.
24. After booting up, it should be on the “Create Palm Profile” screen. Now we use what we’ve hacked into the image. Tap the phone icon in the corner and you should have an “Enable WiFi” option in the menu! Connect your Pre to a WiFi and now you should be able to create a Palm Profile. (If you can’t exit the WiFi Preference screen after connecting just remove the battery again. You should connect to via WiFi after reboot.)

Whew, if you’ve done everything right you should have a Palm Pre device to develop apps on. Contract free of course.