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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
