UPDATE - Good cell phone to use as modem with Debian? cable? bluetooth?

["A. F. Cano" <afc@shibaya.lonestar.org>]

Hi all:

I'm starting a new thread on this since the old one ended up
concentrating on the relative merits of different providers.

Faced with the many decisions regarding phones, cables, bluetooth,
etc...  The last thing I needed was the additional set of decisions
that switching providers would add, so I stayed with Verizon.  I might
regret it, but I guess they realized that there was nothing preventing
me from jumping ship when I made all the calls seeking information and
they were pretty nice and helpful.  Whether the info given was
correct I'll find out soon enough I suspect.

In any case, I ended up getting a Motorola E815 phone.  The list of
features is quite impressive and with the Verizon discounts it only
cost me $50.  I'm happy with the reception I get as the importance
is quality as a phone first and data second.  I had read that the LG
phones tend to drop calls in marginal reception areas.

Given that I knew bluetooth was going to be a long-term proposition
due to Verizon's crippling of OBEX, I decided to get a usb cable
anyway.  I got one just like this, from the same vendor.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Motorola-E815-ROKR-V265-V276-A840-USB-Cable-CD_W0QQitemZ5849729915QQcategoryZ35209QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I specifically bought this because it said "Built in Charge function"
and I knew how important this is to reinitialize the phone if I end up
messing it up.  So I get it and surprise! there's no place to plug the
charger into the cable.  A note to the seller about this tells me that
the charging occurs from the usb port itself.  This sounds strange to
me.  I know that (some?) USB interfaces can provide power, but enough to
charge a phone? Have I been ripped off?

So I try it.  Upon plugging the phone in two separate computers (a
Thinkpad 600E with USB 1/sarge and a Dell 8600 with USB2/woody) the
phone beeps like this: two ascending tones, 4 ascending tones and two
desceding tones.  Is the latter sign of trouble?

On the Thinkpad/sarge/USB1, lsusb doesn't even report the phone.  On the
Dell/woody/USB2, the following error messages are output to stderr:

cannot get string descriptor 1, error = Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide
character(84)
cannot get string descriptor 2, error = Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide
character(84)

And the relevant output of lsusb is:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 22b8:2a62 Motorola PCS 
  Language IDs: none (cannot get min. string descriptor; got len=-1, error=84:Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character)
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            2 Communications
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x22b8 Motorola PCS
  idProduct          0x2a62 
  bcdDevice            0.01
  iManufacturer           1 
  iProduct                2 
  iSerial                 0 
  bNumConfigurations      1
cannot get config descriptor 0, Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character (84)
  Language IDs: none (cannot get min. string descriptor; got len=-1, error=84:Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character)


Furthermore the hubs report: ("lsusb | grep Power" on the
Dell/woody/USB2)

    MaxPower                0mA
    MaxPower                0mA
    MaxPower                0mA

This seems to me to indicate that the USB hubs are not capable of
providing power and thus my cable is useless for the purpose of
charging while connected.  Am I mistaken here?

There are also no apparent serial devices created by plugging in the
phone.  This is on woody.  I have yet to try sarge/kernel 2.6.8 on the
Dell/USB2.

Finally, there are two apps out there that deal with cell phones:
moto4lin (specifically for motorola phones) and bitpim.  At the very
least, I should see the phone as a storage device, the web site says.
BUT! a usb memory key I have, when plugged in reports (partial output):

   MaxPower               90mA
   Interface Descriptor:
     bLength                 9
     bDescriptorType         4
     bInterfaceNumber        0
     bAlternateSetting       0
     bNumEndpoints           2
     bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage
     bInterfaceSubClass      6 SCSI
     bInterfaceProtocol     80 Bulk (Zip)

So right away, interfaceClass is different.  Can someone that knows the
details of the USB protocols tell me if in fact the phone is not
following the standards?  shouldn't I see something about the internal
memory reflected as "Mass Storage"?

If the phone were able to charge from the USB port, shouldn't it report
the MaxPower that it could use?  What is the maximum power that a USB
hub can provide?  I suspect that it would be much less than an empty
battery would need.

So far I haven't tried either application.  I would like to know why
nothing at all shows up in the output of lsusb on the thinkpad.  I
thought usb 1 and usb 2 were supposed to be somewhat compatible?

So far all this is not very encouraging.  The next step is loading up
my address book from the palm pda (also synced with kpilot).  It appears
that the easiest solution might be to get a transflash card (already
on order, the best deal I found was at pricegrabber.com).  I don't
know yet if it is possible to copy the address book directly from the
PDA (it has an SD slot) to the transflash and copy it into its proper
place inside the phone by inserting the transflash card in it, thus
completely bypassing the computer.  Has anyone done something like this?
I suspect there might have to be some format conversion in between.

Thanks for any insight on the mysteries of interfacing debian with cell
phones...  I'll keep everyone updated on whatever progress I make.

Augustine