Using a Zaurus as Cell Phone

[Ling]

I'm excited about this product also. I have done some searching and the only ones that seem to have anything in the way of a dialer are the myPDA folks and I am not interested in venturing into mac land. It appears there app is not finished yet. If others are interested, I would be willing to contribute to a bounty to get a program to write us a dialer app. I would think it would be a money-maker, but it is hard to gauge the size of the Z community.

My CC is getting ready to head to Expansys.

[dsavard]

I just found by chance that Expansys seems to carry the product in the US and CAN:

http://www.expansys-usa.com/product.asp?code=RTM8000

http://www.expansys.ca/product.asp?code=RTM8000

-- hns

Thanks for the link. I was waiting for my current cellphone provider to let me know if they are reselling this product and/or activates it. The answer is no in both cases. So, even if I am managing to buy one, they will refuse to activate it.

Anybody knows if there is a carrier in Canada who will accept to activate these beasts? It seems the practice is to sell the cellphone or any other wireless device with the communication plan.

[tg]

I just found by chance that Expansys seems to carry the product in the US and CAN:

http://www.expansys-usa.com/product.asp?code=RTM8000

http://www.expansys.ca/product.asp?code=RTM8000

-- hns

Thanks for the link. I was waiting for my current cellphone provider to let me know if they are reselling this product and/or activates it. The answer is no in both cases. So, even if I am managing to buy one, they will refuse to activate it.

Anybody knows if there is a carrier in Canada who will accept to activate these beasts? It seems the practice is to sell the cellphone or any other wireless device with the communication plan.

I have this card and use it in US with t-moblie GPRS (not voice as I decided
to get a separate data plan from my t-mobile voice plan - they gave me a separate
sim card for the data plan). In this sense what I'm saying is not relevant to the 'Zaurus as Cell Phone' discussion but one thing I'd like to point out is at least from my experience  this card very quckly drains the battery.
I manage only about 50-60 minutes with my fully charged c-860 (with big battery). Again, this is GPRS data plan only but I can't imagine much better battery life if this is used for
voice application. This is all with latest Cacko ROM and I don't know if other ROM
with perhaps improved device driver would make a lot of difference.
BTW, for those 50-60 minutes (before the battery goes out) browsing the web during my Jersey-Manhattan daily train ride is a real pleasure.

[dsavard]

It's actually relevant to Zaurus as a cellphone if the device drain the battery so fast it is almost not handy to use it as a cellphone.

BTW, in USA your mobile communications providers are much more customer friendly. Here, in Canada, there is only three or four big names acting mostly as monopolies in there respective regions. So, why should they bother with these few guys asking for anything else they have in their marketing basket and customed to maximized the profit (selling a telco plan + a cellphone or a specialized device like the Blackberry)? They are making profits on the device and the plan. Also, they are locking the SIM cards to make sure you will have to buy a new phone if you decide to switch to another provider.

[guylhem]

Fido.ca is know to sell data only plans. Regarding the audiovox, did some tests today with a 6000L - started at 10 am, was still running at 10pm when I decided put it on charge. I just downlocked the CPU and lit off the LCD screen. Received and passed 2 calls, read the ny times using opiereader.

Ok I did accidently turned off the phone for 1h when I hit power instead of LCD off, but 1) I will do the test again tomorrow and 2) to me a full wordkday of charge is more than enough.

I purchased the 6000 extension (2nd battery holder) thinking I may need it to use it as a cell phone but the 6000 on a single battery is good enough for me with the audiovox. I plan to try to leave it on 24/7, only charging at night like a real cellphone.

Now working on a commercial dialer/fax/sms/mms/wap software suite. The code will be GPL but I hope I can raise some funds on the binaries - at least to finish the "phone" software suite.

BTW If somebody is already using the fax functionnality of the audiovox on linux, I'd be very interested to know how.

[dsavard]

I have just found that Rogers is also selling such plans. After asking a rep at expandsys, I was redirected to the following site: GSM World, select Roaming and select the country. There is only two in Canada: Rogers and Fido, and Rogers has just made an offer to buy Fido last week. This week, Virgin annonced its intention to offer mobile communications services in Canada.

Seems, accordingly to analysts Rogers are contracted a debt to buy Fido in response to Virgin's intentions. After looking at what is offered in other countries, it is very discouraging to see there is no competition at all in Canada for mobile services. I really hope the coming of Virgin will change this picture. At least, the announce they made is pulling in that direction.

Happy to here the battery of the SL-6000L is lasting a workday, that's just enough for me. I also have a second battery, plus an adapter to plug it in the car.

[ev1l]

Received and passed 2 calls, read the ny times using opiereader.

Wait, what application do you use to dial/ID calls now?

[guylhem]

Nothing public (yet). It is under work.

minicom also work - gives you caller id, let you call numbers, but having the Z play a tune on an incoming call is way beter

[ev1l]

That' great. Hope you can come up with something soon.

[nappiee007]

Yes there SOLDi in the US here is the link and it's UnLocked
Chi Mei - G1     
CF - G1, GSM / GPRS
GSM unlocked Tri Band World phone

Tri-Bank EGSM900 / DCS1800 / PCS 1900 - GSM World Phone[img]http://www.convergentech.com/images/compact_flash/cf_gsm_gprs/gprs_8_cut.gif\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[dhns]

Tri-Bank EGSM900 / DCS1800 / PCS 1900 - GSM World Phone

It looks a very similar (especially the SIM card area and the antenna mounting position) to the Audiovox RTM 8000 (which is also made by Chi Mei as the FCC ID reveals).
Link

[IMG=http://www.audiovox.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/largeimage.jsp?image=/images/products_large/rtm8000_y.jpg]http://www.audiovox.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/largeimage.jsp?image=/images/products_large/rtm8000_y.jpg[/IMG]

[deniscallies]

Is there anybody who got the audiovox card working under RC5? Tried the HOWTO, but can´t connect to t-mobile in Germany  

How do i have to configure minicom? Tried /dev/ttyS3 but i cannot dial  
any tips?

If i get an incoming call i cannot answer or hangup via minicom -- only with the headset!

Please help!

[dtwilson]

Interesting thread.

I've just recently resurrected my old SL5500 and had been wondering about using it as an alternative mobile handset also.
After reading through the thread I did a cursory google search and came up with the following card, which looks interesting.

It claims to "support Unix" and includes an integrated rechargeable battery (so no drain from your PDA battery). It's also available from expansys, so should be available to US/Canadian buyers out there.

http://www.totalpda.co.uk/Pretec-CompactGPRS-CF-Card.aspx

Unfortunately my wallet is fixed on house renovations these days so can't afford to buy one of these for testing, however, hopefully someone may find the info useful.

dtwilson.

[chayimkirshen]

Do we know anything about how it does "unix".  I'd like to assume that we're really just talking about the card coming up as a modem (which it should).
Really all GPRS controls are a series of specialized at commands and are very, very easy to implement.  All software would have to do is echo to the at command to the proper serial device.  Of course, this is on my list of things to do... just not soon.
Thanks for the link!

[polito]

I actually have the Pretec CompactGPRS compact flash card and have gotten it to work successfully for dialing up the internet via my AT&T EDGE/GPRS service. It was a lil bit of a hassle to get working (you can go to http://www.sdgsystems.com/support ) and download the .ipk for the Pretec which basically installs a pretec.conf in /etc/pcmcia/ (If I remember correctly) so that it's recognized by the hotplug system.

This is the link to the forum post where they talk about getting the card working at SDG Systems:
http://www.sdgsystems.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80  

You can actually get it set up so that you can use the network icon to dial up the internet, you just have to create a dummy configuration for a dial-up modem first, then copy over your working connect script to the file name that the Zaurus Networking program set up.

All in all it works fine. I like the fact that it has it's own battery which allows you to not worry about sucking all the juice out of your zaurus. I've gotten it working on my 5600 and now also on my 6000L though on the 6000L I can't get the Networking app to realize that I've plugged in the modem and that it should allow me to dial-up. It doesn't think it's there so I have to go to the terminal and pppd call DIALUP039184019384031948103948 to get it to dial but it works

If someone does happen to get the Pretec card (or is thinking about it) and needs help getting set up, let me know, I'll be more than happy (ok maybe not, but I'll help anyway) to help you out.

Oh, and it does come with it's own charger and headset and a CF to PCMCIA (PC Card) adapter so you can ALSO use it on your laptop for internet access or SMS, faxing, etc. Software comes ready for Windows, but not for Unix (naturally).

And if anyone has any ideas as to why the card isn't being recognized by the Network App as my modem when I insert it, lemme hear'em. I'm pretty annoyed that all the files are the same as far as I can see on the 5600 and the 6000L (at least the changes and new file [pretec.conf] to get the card working) and so it doesn't make any sense to me why it works fine on the 5600 and not on the 6000L.

OH and before I forget: the card does appear as /dev/ttyS3 and you can feed it AT commands like any other modem. I haven't actually tried using it for making voice calls yet (my AT&T EDGE/GPRS service is data only though I could *probably* jam my cell phone SIM card into it and make regular voice calls.... YMMV).

Polito