ver 3
The purpose of this page is to pass on the things I found out during my first
few days experimenting with the data side of my new T68i. I hope you find it
useful but don't depend on it. Please don't read all this crap. Just do a search
to find subjects you are interested in.
I got a T68i connected to the Telstra (Telstra, national telephone carrier) network in Australia. My main purpose was to be able to check email with a phone that had real pop3 capability and I wanted triband. At the time, Feb 2003, I could only find the T68i and T300 that qualified. The Nokia 3650 is coming but it wasn't here yet.
The pop3 setup was fairly simple, just enable everything as described in the manual and get the GPRS settings from the dealer (mine was the Telstra shop) or Ericsson. The dealer said they entered the settings for GPRS (requested a sort of self-installing SMS from Ericsson I think). But GPRS wouldn't work. I called my carrier's user support 125111 and they said the SIM card hadn't been enabled for GPRS. I assume that was a euphemism for "We didn't enable GPRS on the server that your phone uses". I put in my pop3 settings and everything worked. If you want to get real answers to GPRS and other data connections you must ask the Telstra mobile customer service people if you can talk to the data people. The data people really have their act together.
My next project was to get my PC (laptop the same) to connect through the Internet
using GPRS. Not that, that is useful except for 1 in a million situations but
I thought it would be interesting. This was a major project.
-borrow a USB to IRDA adapter from a friend
-install IRDA on my PC
-find and install IRDA adapter drivers
-find something that would install a 't68 modem' for DUN - see Note 1
-install DUN for the T68
-find DUN settings for my carrier
After hours, I finally got this working but had two problems. The speed was
limited to about 10kbps and although all DNS was being done and I could ftp,
connect to www.telstra.com and check Email, I could not connect to www's other
than my carrier's. Turns out the DUN 'phone number' for my carrier should have
been *99***4# . I was using *99***1# which limits what can be done (for WAP
users??). After I put in *99***4# I had full Internet access: PC to IRDA toT68i
to GPRS to the Internet. If you know how to get the speed higher, please let
me know.
Email me at
gprs1
at
holve.com
Cost control - My carrier charges 22 cents for each GPRS session and 2.2 cents per kilobyte. I wanted to figure out how to control these costs. I have my phone set to download email headers only because I figured I wouldn't be interested in viewing most emails . I could see that if I got 5 emails and and chose to look at all of them, I would pay for 6 sessions plus the data. It appears in most cases when the T68 collects mail, it opens and closes the session automatically (6 sessions). Sometimes the phone asks if you want to close the session. I assume you could leave it open in this case. However, if you turn on the session by first going to WAP Services and selecting your service, the phone connects and stays connected. From there you can do WAP or check Emails and probably not have any more session costs. Alternatively, my carrier has a GPRS plan for $5 a month that allows $5 worth of data and there are no connection costs. Seems the latter is the way to go.
Security - My phone arrived with security enabled. According to my carrier's user support, security is only used for a tiny number of connections. It definitely slows down the connection process (and failed anyway) so I turned it off. WAP SERVICES | OPTIONS | WAP PROFILES | TELSTRA or whatever your profile is | EDIT |SECURITY | OFF
Keeping mail on the server. The T68 pop3 client appears to have no ability
to leave mail on the server. I don't know about you, but when I travel, I always
set my pop3 client to leave mail on server so that when I get back to my desktop
I can have access to all those emails. It appears the only way to get rid of
the header from your phone is to remove the email from the server. That is crap.
If you know a way to leave the mail on server, please let me know:
Email me at
gprs1
at
holve.com
I tried using the archive function to save emails but it was 'full' after I
'copied' in 3 emails. I was successful at 'forwarding' emails to another pop3
account to save it. Of course there is no 'forward' function so I just used
reply and changed the 'To:' address to my other pop3 address. I thought the
he T68 manual said it could only hold 6 emails but I retrieved more than 8 and
it had no trouble. However, it would get real congested if there were numerous
emails to keep and you didn't dare remove them.
Brad
Note 1: Getting the stuff off the Ericsson site is a nightmare. I can't just
give you the urls of the 'frames' because the urls don't work stand alone. You
have to navigate through all their crap. To get the 'modem' that is to be installed
onto your PC/laptop (and other synch, etc stuff) go to:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/au/spg.jsp?page=start
-click on t68i
-click on support
-click on global support
-click on drivers scripts and patches. get what you need. I got the 'modem for
bluetooth, IR or cable' but other packs may include that. A friend used the
dialup wizard for his t68i and he said the same installation went quickly.
-click on synch and get what you need
While you are in the area, you might as well get the Image editor if you don't
have it. It is the only way I know o transfer images to the phone. Its in the
'Imaging and Messaging' section.