Crazy Days

My new Moto Razor V3

I was never brand loyal, in any sense. After two years of faithful serving of my phone (Nokia 2600), which was a ideal home user phone (no GPRS, no MMS, no camera, no data cable support...) I decided to go for a new phone. Considering my primary requirements,

1. Should be available with Java MIDP 2.0
2. Should have GPRS, with modem support
3. Should have a reasonably larger screen, which would give a meaning to Java applications.

I was evaluating several phone models, mostly from Nokia. After extensive research I drilled down to three models, Nokia 6070, Motorolla Razor V3 (prices have come down lot on this one) and Sony Ericson K750i. After all the considerations I finally decided to go for a Razor V3, for the amazingly large display and Bluetooh feature, though it was never in my prerequisites, I found it some thing nice to have around.

This adventure is with my new phone. Motorolla's are definetely different from Nokia's, fankly this phone has a simple configuration compared to nokia phones. After using a Nokia for more than two years it took me a while to get use to the ways of Motorolla (was kinda cultural shock). After several phone calls to dialog call center finally got my GPRS working, and Email client got configured to gmail pop service (which works fine), MMS is working but had a difficulty sending it ot side the country....should check with Dialog, tried out the new Java email client by good people of Gmail from (http://gmail.com/app) which did not work due to a certificate issue in my phone (or that application is not supported in the region), finally came to try out the GPRS modem on the phone.

This time it was unexpectedly simple, compared to trying out Nkia's with a DKU-5. I recently compiled Linux 2.6.19 on my laptop and after pugging the phone to the laptop using a USB cable which came with my MP3 player, "dmesg" showed me a modem on /dev/ttyACM0....wow this is freakingly cool. With little bit of strugling I got "minicom" to talk to the phone. With the this tutorial I found out how this GPRS modems genrally talk and with the help of this guide this guide finally managed to get a entry in my "/etc/wvdial.conf". The guide I refered is not working for Dialog connections since the APN is different to the tutorial. From the AT command guide I found out that "AT+CGDCONT" command accept APN as the third argument and following entry worked for me.

[Dialer GPRS]

Modem = /dev/ttyACM0

Dial Command = ATDT

Init2 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","www.dialogsl.com"

Init3 = AT+CGATT=1

Phone = *99***#

Stupid mode = 1

Well that is prety much what I was planning for the unit, but Linux is packed with many surprices, applications that could do wonders....at a cost ofcourse...you'll see. While browsing the net (not with GPRS :)) I came across a programme called "gammu" which can talk to the phone and backup contacts, SMS's and almost everthing in the device. But gammu is not what I call sane user applications...I love console applications, this is not really the type of application I would want to use in cosole mode....but I found another sloution which has a GUI (based on gammu I guess) called wammu, which became handy :).

Ohhhh I'm on Debian Etch :)

I'm posting this with the GPRS connection on the same phone :).

So this is my happy story of Motorolla Razor V3 on Linux...more to come on this topic later.