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ROKR E2 August 29, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : computers, v220 , add a comment

I suppose I should mention this phone before it goes away…

My mother in law’s phone died and Bree let her use her phone. I gave Bree my phone and borrowed one from work. We tend to have phones hanging around doing not much these days.

Since the last time I borrowed a phone, the ZTE models have become useful for testing so I couldn’t have one of them. In fact all the non-Qtopia phones seemed to be dead, there was just one available. It was a Motorola ROKR E2.

The phone is actually rather significant since it’s a linux-based mid-teir phone. That’s the market we’d like to hit, so it’s good to know the hardware is ready for us. The ROKR is based on a mainstone board and runs Motorola’s EZX with a new GUI called Chameleon which uses Qtopia Core. The Chameleon interface is quite similar to the P2K interface but it’s also similar to the Nokia Series 60 interface (as seen on the N70). Motorola even changed the hardware buttons around to make them match Nokia’s phones which will be good for switchers but annoying for Motorola veterans like me. Actually, the button layout matches the greenphone so using the ROKR has prepared me for that.

I think the phone I got has been used. The SD slot won’t keep cards in and the battery only lasts for 2 days (instead of the 9 claimed in reviews).

I have used bluetooth to copy my old ring tones onto the phone. I finally took a new photo of my desk as the wall paper (the old picture was from my previous office). Bluetooth is easy enough to do (but turning it on/off takes about 20 clicks!) but uploading really kills the battery (I guess the flash is power-hungry).

The camera is awesome compared to my V220. It’s got better resolution but the most significant thing is the quality of the picture and the light that gets in. I can take pictures in low light conditions that don’t look totally crap now. I haven’t tried taking full-size photos and comparing them to my real camera but I imagine the ROKR would come out ok.

The one problem I’ve had is GPRS. I can’t get it to talk at all. This means I can’t send/receive MMS messages too. This phone came from China so perhaps it’s something special about it.

It took me so long to write this that the broken phone is now ready so I’ll have my V220 back tomorrow. I thought I’d end up using it until my greenphone arrived but it looks like that’s not the case.

Virgin Mobile redeems itself January 23, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : v220 , add a comment

I (finally) have a new Motorola V220. I have my original number. I have GPRS. I (will soon) have the unlock codes.

I went all the way to Brisbane because I knew there was a V220 in the Virgin Mobile store there. However, when I got there I enquired about unlocking the phone and they said the only way I could do that was to put at least $80 of credits on the SIM card that came with the phone. I told them that I would not do that because I didn’t want to get a new number and they told me to bugger off. Needless to say I didn’t buy a phone from them, or the case I was looking at.

However, I was thinking about it and the more I thought, the more I figured that they must have been morons. It was Virgin that told me I needed both a new phone and a new SIM card. How on earth could they penalise me for being an existing customer?

I looked around at the Virgin resellers near my house and was surprised to find a V220 at Dick Smith. I got it and confirmed that the hardware was working. I got a case from a bargain bin. It’s not leather like the one in Brisbane but it has a velcro flip that goes over the phone so I’m more confident that it won’t fall out.

I called up Virgin today and the guy on the other end, after hearing my plight and seeing the file notes (which document my sad tale) ordered the unlock codes for me. He also enabled GPRS on my SIM card (the one with my real number).

I could literally jump carriers now. I only have $20 credits with Virgin which isn’t hard to use up. I’m actually tempted to stay now though since they’ve redeemed themselves. At least for a while. There’s lots of paperwork to fill out when you change carriers anyway.

In related news, I’ve been hacking my V220. When you open the cover it now has my name instead of the Motorola logo. I’ve uploaded the photo I took on the first phone (which I use as a wallpaper) and the ring tone I purchased (Lee Harding – Wasabi). I removed a bunch of crap that I don’t need (useless built-in ring tones, pictures, videos). Why you can’t normally remove this stuff is beyond me.

I had $20 credits on 2 SIM cards (with numbers I didn’t want) so I figured I’d buy some ring tones and games. I think these are generally a waste of money but then I had some money to waste. I got a Super Mario Brothers ring tone ($3.95) and 2 Java games at $5.95 each (Yu – A Warrior’s Tale, WW2 Battle for Europe). I got them from Virgin Vibe because I can’t access other sites from my phone (this is intentional because I only have a prepaid account).

I found a site with free midlets but they can’t compete with the stuff you pay for. I might put my own stuff I make up there. Due to the download restriction on my account I used moto4lin (which runs on Mac OS X too!) to upload games. I even uploaded my hacked up version of MicroTank (a J2ME example app from Sun). Something’s wrong though because I can’t play the games I uploaded.

Virgin Mobile Sucks January 18, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : v220 , 1 comment so far

As of now, Virgin Mobile officially sucks.

They would not talk to me for 10 days after the courier said the phone had been delivered because that’s the “turnaround time” for this sort of thing. Worse, when I rang after 10 days, they still had no idea what was going on. I had to talk to a supervisor.

After taking a while to check, it seems that my phone was approved for replacement but apparently things just stopped there because they had no more V220’s in stock. Worse, they are not getting any more in stock. The supervisor said I should check the web site to get a new phone but I told her to bugger off because I specifically wanted the V220. I really can’t see how someone that sells phones would think a similar feature list means the phone is the same. Anyway, they are going to give me a full refund.

Of course, the really annoying thing is that immediately after getting off the phone with them, I rang one of their retail stores and low and behold there are V220’s on their shelves! What self-respecting company cannot identify stock in it’s own retail stores?

I’m so pissed off that I’m probably going to switch carriers now. Unfortunately, I have to spend $80 on recharge credits with the new phone before they’ll unlock it. After that, I’m definitely shopping around.

I sound like a broken record December 30, 2005

Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac, v220 , add a comment

Gee, it seems that all I’m posting about these days is Isaac’s sleeping. Unfortunately that’s not about to change just yet because there’s more news. Isaac ate big (180ml) at 6pm tonight. I suspected he was gearing up for another big sleep. Sure enough, at 10pm he was totally uninterested in eating. Luckily I’ve been through this before so I didn’t fight him like I did with Emily.

Emily is still in her bed. She hasn’t got out of it yet but people keep telling us to wait for a bit longer and she’ll do it. The worst thing she’s done is to lie against the wall and bang her legs on it. We’re giving her books for the morning again because she’s waking up before 7 and we don’t like being woken up to banging. Last time she had books in bed, we had to take them away because she was waking up at night to read them. That was quite a few months ago so hopefully she’ll be better this time. She pooed in the pool at swimming again today. I thought she was a bit off during the lesson and I guess that’s why. Emily can grab things off the bottom of the pool (I have to push her down there) but she won’t grab things off of the step. I think it’s too shallow. She gets all panicy because the top of the water is just above her. She’s also annoying about swimming to the edge of the pool. When she swims to me, she’ll keep going as I move away but when she swims to the side of the pool or to the step, she stops after a few strokes and pretty much expects to be there. It’s a bit annoying because she’ll sit there about to drown when she’s literally centimeters from safety.

My phone has been sent off. I’m now using the Qtopia phone, which I’m not happy to report has a measly 2 days standby time! By comparison, the V220 gets 10 days. I’ve been trying to get my home machine setup to use it. Unfortunately I only have Windows 98 lying around (I’ve been a Mac user for a while) and all the PC stuff requires Windows 2000 or XP. I am using my Windows machine at work to get some files like the Motorola Java SDK. It comes with an emulator that needs Windows 2000 with is fair enough but I can’t even get to the .jar files at home. I mean, Java is Java is Java and it runs in Windows 98. It even runs in Mac OS X! I found a linux version of the p2k (the OS that Motorola phones use) drivers and a program that gives me filesystem access. It looks pretty comparable to the Windows programs I’ve seen. Of course, I’m not really a big Linux user so the only stuff I had lying around was from Redhat 6. Way too old. I borrowed some CDs from work and I’m now running CentOS 4.2 on my old PC.

A bunch of updates December 21, 2005

Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac, v220 , 1 comment so far

My V220 arrived. It’s everything I hoped it would be. However, there’s a little problem with it. The 0 key doesn’t click. It registers when you press it but it doesn’t click. All the other keys click. I rang up to see how I can get them to fix it. As far as I can tell, the procedure goes something like this:

1) Virgin sends me a post pack
2) I send Virgin the phone in the post pack
3) Virgin sends the phone to Motorola
4) Motorola fixes the phone
5) Motorola sends the phone to Virgin
6) Virgin sends me the phone

What a waste of time! Worse, it means I will not have a phone for a few weeks. Luckily, we have some spare phones at work and I can borrow one of them. It runs Qtopia, which I guess will make me one of the first people in Australia to use a Qtopia phone :)

Isaac woke me up at 4am but we wasn’t crying. He was awake and I heard him through the monitor. The room had got cold too which is probably the main reason I woke up. I left Isaac since he wasn’t crying. He started crying at 4:30. We did the “please go to sleep” dance till 5:30 (he was just awake, not hungry) when I gave up trying to go back to sleep. I fed him and then he sat in his chair, content to look around for a while. I put him down and we went down with barely a murmur. That’s 2 days in a row. I’m expecting one more day of this till he just stays asleep until around 6.

Isaac is getting to be a pro at going to sleep. Bree puts him to sleep the most since I’m at work all day and it’s becoming really easy. Just put him in his bed when he’s had enough wake time and he goes to sleep. Sometimes he cries but it’s almost nothing.

Emily’s bed arrived the day before yesterday. We were going to wait till Christmas to put it up but Bree hadn’t seen it and she decided she couldn’t wait so we put it up last night. Emily immediately jumped in and wouldn’t get out again (she cried when we removed her from the room). Strangely though, when it came time to go to sleep, she decided that the cot is where she wanted to sleep (she cried until we put her in it). I guess the bed was fun and all but perhaps a little strange. Bree will get Emily to sleep in the bed during the day (when it’s not as important for her to actually sleep) and if she can’t handle it, we’ll just leave her in the cot at night.

The drainage is almost finished. The pipe is laid and buried, it’s just a matter of finishing the end where it will drain to. It looks a little strange with all the squares of grass. Hopefully it’ll connect to the rest of the grass again quickly. We haven’t done the bit under the footpath because that requires ripping up concrete and we don’t have the tools for that. With a bit of luck, the pipe will redirect the water before it can pool under the house. Time will tell…

The back ramp is done. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s both wider and longer than the other ramp. The slope is more gentle and the decking slats were put on with the right way up so it’s not slippery anymore.

I just fixed up the spelling on my posts. I don’t use Internet Explorer (because I don’t use Windows much) so the Blogger spell checker doesn’t work. Luckily, Safari can do spell checking of text fields.

Emily absolutely loves the Wiggles, High 5 and other such things. Strangely she does not like to watch them on TV but then we never encouraged TV, preferring creative play instead. I’ll try to get a clip of her dancing to her favourite Wiggles song. It’s absolutely hilarious.

My V220 is on the way December 18, 2005

Posted by a1291762 in : v220 , add a comment

The Motorola V220 is not available from retail outlets… I had to order it direct from Virgin Mobile. That’s done and I’m now waiting for it to arrive. They say it’ll be Tues or Wed.

I found a really nifty thing while looking around. Opera Mini is a Java app that basically implements the frontend of the Opera browser. The heavy lifting is offloaded to a server that preprocesses the pages for you (handy, since phones with Java but no browser typically have really slow CPUs).

I don’t know how much it costs but it’s very tempting. I can’t stand the thought of using a WAP browser and my phone isn’t beefy enough to come with a real browser.

I need a new phone December 17, 2005

Posted by a1291762 in : v220 , add a comment

I managed to lose my phone on Monday (no, not as a result of the spider incident). I had a crappy Motorola phone (T190). It worked but it was very basic. The case I purchased for it (came with a belt clip) had disintegrated so I was using some PVC tape to hold the belt clip to the phone. I’ve been waiting for a Qtopia phone but I still have no idea when I’ll get one of them :(

So I looked around today to see what phones were available. I can’t believe how expensive they all are! I realise most people buy them on a contract but I need an unlocked phone so I can resume my previous service. I finally figured it’d be best to pick one from my carrier, Virgin Mobile. Of the phones they have on offer, two struck me as good. The Motorola V220 and the BenQ M315. The BenQ phone is interesting. They’ve sacrificed many features in order to bring bluetooth to a cheap phone. If I wanted a bluetooth headset I’d definitely get this one. However, I don’t really care about headsets.

The Motorola V220 continues a long line of hackable phones from Motorola. I’ve just scratched the surface of the available resources on the net and I’m mighty impressed by what I’ll be able to do with it. To me though, the ultimate draw is the promise of being able to write programs to run on the phone. Of course, I’m talking about Java here so it’s really only games that can be made but the fact that it’s even possible is terribly appealing to me.

I’ll brave the Christmas crowds tomorrow to go and get one of these phones. I’m excited already!