Anyone used Motorola V600 with PPC?

[ChristopherTD]

My Sony T68i cellphone has been very unreliable (I am now onto the 3rd handset after 2 failed). I use it primarily for GPRS with my iPaq 5550 and as a sort of walkie-talkie with my wife. Voice use is minimal. It is connected to the Orange network in the UK.

I am able to upgrade this for free, now that I have had it for a year. The two main contenders seem to be the T610 (more of the same) or the Motorola V600. I am interested in the V600, I like the flip design and it seems to offer all the Bluetooth I need.

A review I read hinted that the BT modem implementation on the V600 was a bit strange and I wondered if anyone had actually used one of these with a PPC for GPRS Internet access? The Orange "Trainers" look at you blankly when asked a question like that.

Regards
Christopher

[ChristopherTD]

Nobody?

Ah well, I was ever being a guinea pig...

[f1rick]

I use a Motorola V500 for GPRS access (on UK Orange) without any problems. It works great. As far as I am aware there is very little difference between the V500 and V600 except that the V600 has metal covers and is able to take movies.

I can also browse the files on the phone using OBEX file transfer and send photos from the phone to the ipaq using obex push. It is also possible to send photos, mp3s and midi tones to the phone from the ipaq using obex push. To sync the phone with the PC for contacts you do need to use the motorola mobile phone tools. There is no obex sync like the t68i.

Richard

[ChristopherTD]

Excellent!

I went down to the Orange shop, filled in the forms, and discussed all the options and had the phone in my hand (a v500 in fact). The assistant rang to enable the phone only to discover that even though I am out of contract as of today, I can't get a new phone until tomorrow. So it went back in the box.

It is good to hear that the V500 works well though.

[Kowalski]

it seems that some people are having firmware problems with v600.
you should consider buying SE z600 if you like clamshell phones. it has all the functionality of t610 with different form factor.
motorola has several disadvantages over SE so if i were you i would go for z600

[ChristopherTD]

it seems that some people are having firmware problems with v600.
you should consider buying SE z600 if you like clamshell phones. it has all the functionality of t610 with different form factor.
motorola has several disadvantages over SE so if i were you i would go for z600

Unfortunately Orange don't offer the Z600, it does look like a nice phone though.

[f1rick]

I read the same about firmware problems with the moto phones, not just the v600. I've not experienced any such problems with my V500. I think most of these were from around the time when the phones was first released. I would guess these issues have now been fixed by newer firmware.

Richard

[Kacey Green]

Don't forget to ask the kind folks at www.smartphonethoughts.com that is their primary intrest (as a web site/ forum) as ours is PPCs

[dochall]

EDIT - right, forget all of the tosh below. I just tried it again and it worked first time. :roll:


I am having problems using the v600 on the vodafone network.

The problem appears to be associated with the apn used.

Vodafone has a wap apn (wap.vodafone.com) and an http? apn (internet).

It would appear though that despite setting up a new connection, with the correct apn, and setting it to default that the phone doesn't use it.

I have been able to get around it by using the FLEXGSM driver that the pocket presence ship as part of running voice as that allows you to set the as part of the connection.

I have just raised a question with motorola support so we'll see if they can sort it.

[ChristopherTD]

Right then. I now have the V500 and it is paired with my iPaq 5550.

I can send SMS from the iPaq with EasySMS. I haven't tried to see if it can pick up SMS though.

I have managed to configure it for GPRS (fortunately someone posted the vanishingly obscure configuration string that enabled this).

I have sent images to it from the iPAQ using OBEX.

None of the phone tools that I previously used (Running Voice GSM or SmartGSM) work with the phone though.

Has anyone found any Pocket PC software that lets me manage the contacts on the phone?



For the record, here is the procedure for GPRS (quoted directly from James Crossley's original newsgroup post)


1. Bluetooth pair the iPAQ and phone.
2. Create a new modem connection, using Bluetooth Dialup Modem
3. Use *99# as the phone number
4. enter "user" and "pass" for username and password (this may not be
necessary, I don't know)
5. Press advanced. Set the baud rate to 19200, uncheck Wait for dial tone.
6. Enter: +CGDCONT =1,"IP","orangeinternet" into
the "Extra Dial-string" box. Without this, I found the iPAQ said that the
answering modem hung up, or something.

[ChristopherTD]

To update the progress...

The latest build of EasySMS 1.55 (confusingly my previous version was also 1.55) works perfectly, sending and receiving SMS.

I haven't found any Pocket PC software that manipulates the contacts yet, but BVRP sell a re-branded version of Motorola's PC suite and that works well enough (using a USB cable from a previous Motorola phone).

So in summary, I am very pleased with the V500/iPaq 5500 combo.