I am also using a Pantech Pocket right now. I live in Mexico but I got an unlocked AT& Pocket from a friend.
I was able to root the phone using SuperOneClick and managed to get rid of the AT&T bloatware that is really not needed in my country. I was also able to replace the stock status bar color and status bar icons using Rom Toolbox.
The phone came with Gingerbread on it (2.3.4) and AFAIK there are not firmware updates from Pantech yet.
So far, so good but I'm still hoping someone will come out and develop a custom recovery for it, until then I'm afraid we won't be getting much love from the custom ROM devs (CM, AOPK).
Regardless of that, I love the phone since day one, it's almost like having a tablet
.