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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
You bought an N-Gage, didn't you?
Most (perhaps all, not sure exactly) Sprint PCS phones don't have user-accessible GPS co-ordinates. Instead, it just relays the raw data from the satellites to the Sprint tower to do the math involved to locate you. Of course, they don't let the end users have this data. I've heard rumors of them having an extra feature in the near future that lets you get the actual co-ordinates from them, but for an extra fee. So for now, i'd stay away from Sprint and look towards other providers.
IRC
Don't waste your time looking at any of Verizon's phones. I don't think that any have full GPS capabilities (just the tower-dependent form for e911), and none use J2ME. In fact, the only ones that can take non-BREW apps are the Palm and PPC hybrid phones. Almost all (if not all) of the VZW phones also prohibit downloading of ringtones and wallpapers over WAP, even on my Nokia 3589i. Sadly, Verizon Wireless seems to be gaining a stranglehold on the US wireless market, so good deals, phones, and features will be found elsewhere.
Not sure about the hackability of PalmOS, but I would tend to think that it'd be pretty pliable. The new Treo 600s are the size of a normal cell phone, it's really amazing, so you shouldn't count it out based on size.
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.
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
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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