Re: mobile IM

On Monday 12 July 2004 22:05, you wrote:
> hi meredydd
>
> i've read the page about your attempts to create an instant messenger
> for mobile phones.
> it seems you learned a lot about what works/doesn't work with midp
> connections.
> right now i'm trying to decide which java mobile phone should be my
> next. i absolutely want one with socket support since it will give me
> hours of happy hacking...

> unfortunately the mailing list on that page doesn't exist any more so
> i couldn't browse that archive.
Oops. No, it still exists, but that was a duff link. Fixed now, thanks 
for telling me. I was wondering why everyone has been mailing me 
directly rather than the list... :^)

I'm CCing the list, anyway.

> so i'm interrested in:
> - any information about which european mobile phones support tcp
> sockets
All righty, here's a general peek as I see it:

*	Any of the PalmOS models support EVERYTHING. Drool. If you feel up to 
affording it, drop this message right now and go buy one. It's that 
simple.
*	The Sony Ericsson(sp?) 900 supports sockets (and all of MIDP2.0, I 
think), but the 800 doesn't.
*	Of Nokia models, only the Symbian models support sockets (I 
think...there's one out which can do email, now, but that may be 
through an HTTP gateway, or not exposing sockets to midlets). Most of 
these Symbian (Series 60 flavour, not to be confused with Series 90 
phones, about which I don't know a lot, or Ericsson's UIQ - those last 
two are similar, I believe, but diverge) models unfortunately have a 
buggy Java socket implementation, documented at 
http://www.everybuddy.com/~meredydd/nokia_fu.html. Not all apps can do 
this, so you're limiting your ability to use third-party stuff.
*	All Symbian phones can also be developed for natively, but there are 
no decent tools to do this with under Linux, and certainly not for 
Series 60.
*	All of the 3G handsets I've looked into support MIDP2.0, but 
Hutchinson 3G aka Three (here in the UK, at least) locks users into a 
"walled garden" and doesn't allow them access to the Internet at large. 
Way to sell a data network, guys...
*	About the Motorola flipphones, I know unfortunately little. See below.
*	You also need to look out for Qualcomm BREW phones. Proprietary, 
Windows-dev-only, and generally icky. They live mainly (solely?) under 
CDMA in the US, where they are associated with one provider (Verizon) 
who also do a walled garden. Avoid.

In general, anything which supports MIDP2.0 is guaranteed to be fine, 
and nicer in lots of other ways as well, so get one of those if you 
can. Check, too, that you have unfettered Internet access (don't get 
fobbed off with "you can access all types of content" or "you can check 
your email"). I think that's just about it.

Oh, yeah, and it goes without saying that you want GPRS, cause 
circuit-switched GSM data is slow, expensive, and generally WAP-only 
(no TCP/IP).

> - any information about what you can do with http/tcp connections and
> what doesn't work 
See above for sockets on the Nokia Series 60 phones. HTTP generally goes 
through WAP gateways, which are very restrictive. Bandwidth is minimal 
(I almost suspect the gateways throttle it to slower than the network 
can take, but perhaps I'm being paranoid ;^) ), and tricks like sending 
data a little at a time don't work (caches the entire response) - nor 
does receiving a request and waiting indefinitely until a message can 
be passed (O2's times out after about 30 seconds).

> and as soon as i've decided on a phone:
> - your ebme client
http://www.everybuddy.com/eb-lite/files/ebme.jad

> - maybe an account on everybuddy.com
All right, say when ready. If you want to fiddle/hack yourself, the 
source for both the MIDlet and the MIDlet-to-GUIcomms gateway are in 
Subversion, and I'm more than willing to give you a hand.

> tia
>
> manuel

Meredydd