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Motorola v330 phone
Motorola v330 phone
Note! This phone works better than my previous phone but the user interface is somewhat kludgy. Once you work around its misdesigned phonebook and confusing and inconsistent menu system it does work without crashing (as my sony T610 was prone to do whenever using bluetooth). I'm willing to trade some UI uglyness for a phone that doesn't crash once a day and the extra speed that EDGE provides. Perhaps the newer Sony Erricson (T616, etc) phones work better than the T610 I bought, but I wasn't willing to gamble after experiancing a year of crashes and other problems with my T610.
Overall, the Motorola v330 feels snappy, with the web browser and menus responding much faster than my older T610. But how does it work as a celular EDGE/GPRS modem?
Testing in Atlanta, GA, USA where I get 5 bars of service (9th floor) using a T-Mobile VPN Internet account ($19.95 a month when bundled with a voice plan), I have seen bursts of 20-23 KB/sec on downloads, with sustained speeds of 12-13 KB/sec. Uploading is significantly slower, with sustained speeds of 4-5KB/sec.
{My previous, GPRS only (no EDGE) phone maxed out at 5.6KB/sec downloads, and 1-2KB/sec uploads, so EDGE is definately an improvement. It makes browsing the web a slow process, as opposed to a painfully slow process.}
How to make GPRS/EDGE on this phone work with linux
- Edit your /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf file to replace the standard pin_helper program with the following: "pin_helper /sbin/pinhelper". Edit the /sbin/pinhelper to contain the following line: echo "PIN:1234".
- Set up your rfcomm.conf file so that rfcomm0 will automatically bind to the phone when the pppd opens it. Here is my file as an example. (You will have to use "hcitool scan" to find the apropriate bdaddr for your phone if you do not already know it. Be sure to set your phone to "discoverable" via the find me menu option first.)
- Set up your PPPD to open rfcomm0 and send the correct commands. Here is my gprs peers file and chat-tmobile-gprs file as examples. Unless you have the tmobile VPN Internet service, you may need to change some things.
- Make your laptop initiate the connection (via an RFcomm PPP connection by typing "pppd gprs" for example) and enter the pin (1234) on your phone. (Use a "tail -f /var/log/messages" to observe the process...)
- If everything went OK, you will not have a PPP connection to the internet!
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Motorola v330 phone