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Hacker-Friendly Wireless Phones w/ GPS?
Milo_Mindbender asks: "I'm looking to buy a cell phone that is reasonably accessible to hacking. Not illegal stuff, I'd just want to be able to write and load programs on the phone myself. I particularly want access to the GPS in the phone. I'm not picky about what language or environment I have to use as long no hardware mods to the phone are required and I don't have to pay someone an arm and a leg for a developers kit. Can anyone recommend something (just normal sized phones please, not the big PDA hybrids) they've had good luck with?"
The i730 is a Java & GPS enabled phone that should fit the bill.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
He wants to put on programs. You can't (legally) do that with Brew. Also you can't get the GPS information on the VX6000 anyway. Just as proof, go ahead and put a hello world program on your VX6000.
If you don't go the PDA route (ie Palm or PocketPC based phones) then get one with J2ME. You will have to stay far far away from Verizon and their Brew/Get-It-Now nonsense. This page goes into details about Brew, J2ME and the restrictions of the various carriers.
Check out the cryptophone. http://www.cryptophone.de/ May not meet exactly the criteria the original poster is looking for, but definately a hacker friendly phone nonetheless. Has strong encryption, not the pseudo encryption used on most wireless phones. Works over GSM and both parties must have this type of phone.
If Java is an option there are plenty of phones out there that support J2ME to some extent. However, to be able to do serious stuff, like TCP/IP you need a J2ME with MIDP 2.0, which is still quite rare.
Unfortunately does the series 60 not provide GPS capability w/o a hardware add-on.
I don't know whether it's around in the US, but my Nokia 6600 manages all that and more. You can install/uninstall applications, write them with the free SDK from Nokia and test them on their emulator.
:-)
It's got a full-blown Symbian multi-tasking OS, and you might even be able to do what you want with MiniGPS. It cost me the equivalent of about $180, with contract.
The important thing for me is that MAME runs on it.
Meep meep
There are several sites out there...
try http://www.cellphonehacks.com
~GoAT~
Or you could just download the BREW SDK from Qualcomm.
Qualcomm and Verizon do not want to make it difficult to develop BREW apps, as they are a potential source of revenue.
lots of phones have Java J2ME support. Perhaps you could find one that supports the location API (JSR-179)
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=179
I have a sony ericsson T616. The T610/T616/T630 are very small normal phones (not PDAs) and support many of the optional APIs. I don't know if they support JSR-179 though. There are several links worth following from the above link.
Also, I understand AT&T's m-Mode has a locator service, that let's you go to a web page to see where your friends are. Perhaps the application you could write your application as a server-side web/WAP application that uses m-mode. Many simple games, for example are WAP applications instead of code on the phone itself.
I don't know any non-PDA phones that let you write C++ code and upload it. Most phones make your code run in a sandbox, such as BREW, J2ME or morphun. In my short experience, writing code for phones is a royal pain. You have to learn about all the different mutually-exclusive APIs/engines for the particular phone, only to find that none of them will let you do something you thought was simple (like add an entry to the datebook). Writing for PDAs is easier - it's more like writing traditional desktop apps.
Hope that helps
I'm not sure about the GPS side of things, but the most hacker-friendly phones I've found are the Nokias from AT&T wireless. They don't place any restrictions on the phones, and the development kits as well as software to transfer the applications are freely available for download from Nokia's website. Mine is a J2ME environment and has been fun to play with so far. AFAICT, they are the only ones in the US who have not restricted their phones.
Lots of good developer info is available on forum.nokia.com, and some basic win32 tools are available here.
Hint for buying one: Shop Amazon for the best price, then go to the AT&T wireless store near you to purchase. Show them Amazon's price, and they will often get close or even match it without requiring you to mail something in for a rebate.
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You're not going to get a phone with GPS. I believe the other poster was correct in stating that this is calculated on the provider's side using triangulation. I'm only speculating but that sounds reasonable. GPS is satelite based and fairly different from cell phone technology. The most hackable phones right now are the Nokia 3650, and all of its "Series 60" and "Series 90" cell phones. What other phone offers video? Additionally, I have seen a pseudo-GPS program available for the 3650. But all it does is keeps a list of towers and tell you which tower you are closest to. Not even close to the kind of GPS your question implies.
The Sony Ericsson P800 can do GPS. Infact there is an app that will record the ID of the tower you are currently connected to and you can configure it to alert you next time you connect to that tower. It will also run Opera! As well as many other java apps.
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
As for the J2ME side of things you can upload freely to most phones, develop freely and so on, for the most part. Nag screens while DLing unregistered apps are about the only thing I've encountered, no show-stopper there. I've had much success on the lowly LG 5350 with Sprint, although that particular phone still has little cable support. You can browse the file system on it with bitpim though. Um, one big problem I see with most CDMA phones is that they have no common AT command set as do their GSM counterparts. There's plenty of Googleable info out there on common AT command sets for GSM phones. This is important because beyond the usual modem stuff there are extentions that allow for changing data modes, phonebook transfers, getting into test modes - all sorts of fun. And because it's fairly standard on current GSM handsets and openly published you can focus more on tweaking the phone itself and not just figuring how to talk to it. I've yet to find anything like this for CDMA handsets, although I have my suspicions about the S/E T68i for the few lucky bastards that own them.
Oh, and for the record, for my personal use I have Tmo and a S/E t68i. I only use VZW for work and because they supply it. I canceled my personal service with them due in part to their deplorable billing practices and because $80/mo for unlimited data is just outa line. Credit where it's due though, they have one hell of a network. The Sprint Vision unlimited for $10 is sweet but my wife now has that phone and I just had to have bluetooth and a GSM phone to play with. The S/E was free, has excelent battery life and crappy reception. But hey, for free, it's a good start. Next month I should have me a Nokia 3650, chock full of Symbian cotton panty goodness and soon, Perl! Wheeeeee! Oh, yeh, Tmobile is $20/mo (on a voice plan, $30 without) for unlimited data with no NATing (yup, that's a real IP address there buddy!) and no port filtering/blocking. Basic WAP service is included in the voice plans if I'm not mistaken(80, 110, 25). As for GPS on GSM phones I really don't know much about that yet. I've not seen it on anything first hand myself.
As for the CDMA guys, I hope someday that they come out with some good phones (bluetooth, Kyocera palm thing that doesn't crash, decent battery life, get over the goddamned camera fetish already, ditch fucking BREW!) and realize that their poo does stink and that their data service is NOT worth $80/month. $40 I would pay, especialy for EV-DO when it gets widespread, but that's all I'd pay for their unlimited data. 'Nuff said.