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Which Cell Phones & Networks for SSH?

Posted by Cliff on from the GPRS-and-port-22 dept.

muffinresearch asks: "I've been thinking about picking up a new PDA/Smartphone in the seasonal sales, I am finding a lack of more technical information with regards to being able to use SSH software via GPRS. Now as far as I can see, the Treo 600, and the Sony-Ericsson P900/P910i can all use third-party SSH clients.However what is lacking here in the UK is info on which networks allow access on port 22, and whether this access requires a pay-monthly account or can you do it on a Pay-as-you-go account? I'm reckoning some of you will have useful info on what is working for you as far as phones and networks that do SSH, and your experiences in practice. Happy New Year to all!"

6 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Series 60 by Kris_J · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's a puTTY client for the series 60 mobile phones, and it certainly works over Australia's Optus mobile network.

  2. Danger Hiptop by jeif1k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Get a Danger Hiptop from T-Mobile. You turn it on and it just works. It supports web browsing, E-mail with push, AIM, SMS, a regular cell phone, a transparently web-synchronized organizer, some games, a VGA camera, Yahoo Messenger, and SSH (plus several more applications that I haven't tried). You also get an E-mail address and web-based access to your data. Also, the keyboard is the most usable among all the devices I have tried.

    The device is $200 and you pay $20/month for unlimited data services. You have to add a voice plan to that; the cheapest is another $10/month, making the device $30/month (1 year commitment).

    1. Re:Danger Hiptop by daviddennis · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They do charge $10 for the SSH client, which I think is pretty reasonable considering that not many customers on a percentage basis are going to want it.

      I have the T-Mobile Sidekick and I can say that it's a great feeling being able to SSH on my cellphone without worrying about the enormous monthly fees associated with other carriers.

      But there are a few downsides. The main one is that T-Mobile service is pretty bad in many places, including Los Angeles, where I live. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't work, you can find yourself staring at a broken antenna icon for rather longer than I would hope.

      Verizon has somewhat better service, from what I understand, but all cellphones seem to have trouble at one time or another. I will say that T-Mobile customer service is pretty good, and you can get the SideKick II and start service for very little out of pocket money. (Watch out for those cancellation penalties, though!)

      The SSH client does work and it has saved my bacon a few times already. So I recommend it with reservations about service. If you can, check with fellow Sidekick users in your area before buying.

      D

    2. Re:Danger Hiptop by gabe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Danger's platform is limited for developers, so you'll be able to find better apps for other devices that use J2ME, Palm, WinCE, etc. Having said that, the Sidekick/Hiptop II has a very nice web browser, AIM client, etc. But it's quite clumsy as a phone (have to open it up to dial numbers - or selected them from a list on the phone using an awkward scroll wheel).

      --
      Gabriel Ricard
  3. Experience of ssh over gprs worldwide by sl956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am a heavy user of ssh over gprs (or gsm where gprs is not available):
    I usually don't need/want a laptop when I am traveling so I initially went the PDA+cellphone way.
    I have used my old Zaurus SL-5000D with a bluetooth CF-card and a triband SonyEricsson cellphone (T68i, then T630) to ssh into my european servers from Europe (UK, Italy, NL), the US (NYC, LA), Asia (HK, Cambodia, Thailand) and even from Japan, using a rented blutooth-enabled cellphone.
    It has always worked flawlessly. I never had any problem with blocked 22 port or anything like that in any of these countries.
    I considered the Treo 600 very seriously, but I will stick to my current PDA+cellphone solution. In Japan the Treo would be as useless as my Sony-Ericsson. But it is a lot easier to rent a simple bluetooth-enabled cellphone and use my usual PDA than it would be to rent an integrated local smartphone with an ssh client.

    For the networks questions, there are more problems : if the cost is not important (company paid for instance), just use the roaming partners of your cellphone company : the big european players (Vodafone, Orange, T-mobile) usually try to have at least one partner allowing data in every country (be it over gprs or gsm). But it is expensive, and the costs are very difficult to predict. So if you want to optimize, you have to buy pay-as-you-go plans in every country, being careful to choose plans allowing data. You usually have to pay a premium for data but it is a lot cheaper than simply roaming.
    The biggest problem then becomes to choose the right simcard from you (huge) collection depending on the place where you are. It can sometimes be tricky like : So I am in Cambodia near the Thailand border and I don't have any Cambodian pay-as-you-go plan. Choices are using my 12Call simcard because i am not far from Thailand and I can see their network from here, or using my SmarTone simcard, roaming through a local network to HongKong, or simply use the local roaming partner of my european network. Which one would be the cheapest??? The answer, found by trying, was using my HongKong pay-as-you-go plan (SmarTone). Please don't ask me why. :-)

    Just my two euro-cents.

  4. Some useful information. by Yaztromo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've recently hooked myself up with a similar set-up, and have recently been writing about it in my journal. I'll detail it a bit here.

    Here's what I'm running:

    How everything is connected:

    • The PowerBook is outfitted with WiFi (802.11g) and Bluetooth, using WiFi when at home/office, and GPRS through the T610 via Bluetooth when on the road.
    • The Tungsten C is outfitted with WiFi (802.11b) and InfraRed, using WiFi when at the home/office, and GPRS through the T610 via IR when on the road (technically I can get it online via WiFi if I use the PowerBook as a bridge in ad-hoc mode, but it is exceedingly rare that I'd ever need to have both the laptop and the T|C online at the same time when outside WiFi range).

    So far, this is a set-up I'm quite pleased with. The only way it could be better were if the Tungsten C supported Bluetooth as well as 802.11b.

    I can't recommend Bluetooth highly enough for this sort of connectivity either. So long as I'm within 10m of the phone, I can connect to it from the laptop. And Mac OS X's Bluetooth support is excellent -- I'm able to synchronize my contact list and calendar, transfer files back and forth, send and receive SMS messages from my desktop, dial phone numbers, and connect to the internet -- all without wires, or any set-up hassle.

    SSH has been important for me, as one of my primary uses for this sort of connectivity will be CVS source repository access through SSH.

    I've only had the phone for a week, but I'm quite pleased with it in general. I could have done without the camera portion I suppose (the resolution and quality is terrible), but might come in handy for something someday.

    Overall, the set-up appears to be working well, and I'm as pleased as punch with it. Everything is nicely portable, and I have instant access everywhere I go. Set-up has been a snap, and everything works as expected. Now if only I could get cable modem speeds out of this set-up, I'd never work at a desk ever again :).

    Yaz.