Favorite Software for iPAQ/Cell Phone BT?

[dhoward]

I need some input from the great wizards!

I am looking for the best PPC software to use on the iPAQ for communications. Hardware is BT for the iPAQ 5455 and BT GSM/GPRS cell phone.

There are several good SMS packages and Dialers. mPhone does a very nice job. But I also need software to compose short e-mails on my iPAQ that will allow me to send them via BT to my carrier ATTWS GSM.

When I compose a message using the keypad on the Nokia 6310i phone, it ask me how I want to send the message: SMS or e-mail ?

What software on the PPC will allow me to do this also? Not every message I send will be to another cell phone with SMS. Most will be to a desktop using an e-mail address.

I don't want to depend on using ActiveSync to send my messages. I want to send them via my cell phone, suing software on my iPAQ.

Best suggestions and recommendations?

Txs
david

[dochall]

I may be missing the point here but to send email with a gsm phone all you need is Pocket Outlook. You simply set up the phone in connection manager and then use that connection to connect to the net when you want to send or send and receive email.


If you're asking for a app that does sms and email in package - I am not aware of one but it's nothing something I have really looked into.

[Janak Parekh]

Same here. You can use something like Running Voice GSM (http://www.pocketpresence.com/rvgsm.asp) to handle SMS (I haven't used it, but have heard great things about it), but the only other compelling email app I've seen for Pocket PC is @mail, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't support SMS (at least, yet).

--janak

[Brad Adrian]

I would also highly recommend a wireless utilization program, like GPRS Monitor from Spb Software House. It's a great help in keeping track of your data usage.

[Ed Hansberry]

As has been said - the only thing you need to do email on your iPAQ with a bluetooth phone is a connection to a TCP/IP network. I do email with Inbox via my T-Mobile account with a t68 and my 3900.

What specific problem(s) are you running into.

[dhoward]

Thanks, to all for your helpful suggestions.

Up until this point, I have not been sending any e-mail from my iPAQ. With my WLAN card, I would go wireless from my iPAQ to my Linksys 802.11b router here in the house -> to my POP3 mail server in the Dallas area. So far, so good. I could use Pocket Explorer to scan or read my e-mails that I normally do with my laptop.

Now we get to a new playing field with the Bluetooth. I can still access the Internet through Pocket Explorer to scan and read as before. With this new BT technology, I wanted to compose e-mails ahead of time on my iPAQ and send them on the fly.

Other good uses for sending e-mails comes in the form of sending alpha text messages to Flex Pagers (people who don't have cell phones). I already have the formal e-mail addresses for their pagers listed in my Contacts. This is where it was a little frustrating, since the advertised software for GSM/GPRS only do SMS messages, not e-mails. Clear so far?

Thanks to dochall and Janak, they made me stop and look at the resources on my iPAQ. The Inbox provides exactly the service I need; just had to set the routing for the Services. That was another adventure!

As mentioned above, I have a POP3 mail server that I can access, away from the home base. Under Inbox -> Services -> New, I was able to set up the needed information and Viola! it made the BT Connection to my Nokia 6310i, and sent that message instantly. Man, I was amazed. I was right proud.

Ed, I took your comment from last night and tried it one step further, using Inbox. I tried to set up access for a second POP3 mail server from a different Internet provider - Verizon. Well, that never worked. I pulled my hair out, but the messages would never send. After a brief technical conversation today, I was told that Verizon does not support e-mail service from an outside mail program. You can only access it through their web server. So it was never going to work with them.

So I'll just be happy and use my first POP3 who carries all my mail every day. I really don't want to want to rcv all my daily mail on my iPAQ--have several mailing lists to browse each day. Now I just need to figure out how to send, but not receive, until I want can get back to my laptop.

So a BIG thanks to you wizards for parting the clouds. Unless I have overlooked something obvious, I will use the current Inbox program. Other suggestions are welcomed if I am still missing another opportunity.

Thanks again.

PS Janak, RVGSM is not set up to run on the 5455 and 6310i right now. I've been testing for Magnus, but getting some conflicts. They have my latest notes and are looking at the problems.

[urologyhealth]

I purchased a Pretec Bluetooth card for my Casio E-200 and set up a pairing between my SonyEricsson T68i-GSM phone of ATT and made a new connection using 9600 baud. It dials the number to my Verizon dial-up number, (I see the number and connecting on the phone)but network doesn't connect. I was trying to avoid using data part of AT&T network and the excessive cost of it and simply use the phone minutes. Has anyone succeeded in doing this?

Thank you,

[spaceman]

If you are on ATTWS GSM/GPRS, dialing directly into an ISP's dial-up access number is not supported. ATTWS does not support CSD dial up that would allow you to use your voice minutes for data.

You ned to get the right info from your ISP for which POP3 servers they they will allow access from outside their network but requires authentication. Earthlink has this. I'm surprised Verizon does not.

[ajf]

Voicestream used to allow you to send a text message to any internet e-mail address but first putting the e-mail address in as the first part of the SMS followed by a space for the subject and a # to separate the body from the subject. Then you would send the SMS to 500. So in a sense it was e-mail via SMS.

T-Mobile still supports this (Voicestream is now T-Mobile) but they don't seem to have it clearly documented on their site, probably seeing as they are pushing their GPRS capability and want you to subscribe for that.

You can create an address book of short cuts for email addresses because you are still limited by SMS message size, so you probably don't want to have to type a long e-mail address.

With the Nokia 6310i, the send e-mail option in Message just automates the above. So for T-Mobile I would enter the e-mail address at the first prompt (E-mail address:), the subject at the second prompt (Subject:) and then the body of the message in the standard SMS editing window which pops up next. Then select Options, Send e-mail and enter 500 at the E-mail server number: prompt. I haven't played with this enough to know if it support the newer long (i.e., split) SMS standard as I seldom want to type that much into my phone!

You should also be able to do this with most SMS programs on PocketPC, just set 500 as the number to send the SMS too and follow the format above for addressing and the subject and body.

I don't know if ATTWS support this same SMS mechanism for sending e-mails or if they do what number they use for the e-mail server. I don't use it very frequently but it's great for that infrequent occasion when you really need and don't have access to a computer, and it works great if you don't have your PPC either.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
ajf