Re: UPDATE - Good cell phone to use as modem with Debian? cable? bluetooth?
A. F. Cano wrote:
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?
No, most phones are using battery technology and lower voltages these
days that allows for charging from USB. My Motorola RAZR charges from
its USB cable, no problems. The only issue I've run into is some
mini-USB cables I had were "four pin" and others were "five pin" and the
phone needed the five to charge, and only four for data-only.
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?
Yes. The phone didn't negotiate properly with the PC.
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"?
Not necessarily. It's completely up to the manufacturer how they
implement "getting to" the memory. Many phones seem to use a
proprietary serial stream to the serial USB "interface" to retrieve/set
data in their memory.
I'd be more worried that Verizon has done something wonky to that
phone's USB stuff to disable data use, really.
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.
Yes. USB devices are supposed to negotiate how much power they wish to
use from the bus, in case too many devices are attached for the computer
to service with power. Really cheesy devices like the little USB fans
and coffee cup warmers (eeek...) sometimes don't do this properly.
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.
All I can share at this point is that I haven't even attempted to sync
the Motorola RAZR with Linux yet... the Motorola tools CD and a USB
cable appears to work under Windows to Outlook (ugh!).
If/when I get time to fiddle with it, I'll send an update here, but it
may not help with your particular phone...?
All I've done so far is plug the phone into a Linux box running Sarge,
and it recognized it (I don't have the kernel output with me here at
this location) and the phone was able to charge. I didn't see any
indication that serial or mass storage came up, however. Just a "device
number" that the USB subsystem "recognized".
Nate
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