Interacting with your phone in Linux

Hello all,

I searched information about how to interact with the phone in Linux and I found sparse or little information about this.

I post here what I've discovered so far so that anybody wanting to use Linux could interact with his/her phone without installing Windows.

I searched a way to flash the firmware in Linux and didn't find any way. More details here: http://www.topsony.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4333

I use Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) so this is the reference distribution.

- By default if your phone has a M2 card, you can insert it in a card reader or plug in your USB cable and Linux will recognize your M2 card as an external storage device.

- You can convert your movies into special mpeg4 format that you can watch on your phone. An entire film (around 2 hours) would occupy around 200 - 250 MB. After copying it on the phone's card you can watch it, fast forward, etc.
Here's the link for a P900, but the procedure is the same for any phone: http://www.alfonsomartone.itb.it/cmrgbo.html

- Bluetooth: install "bluez-utils" and follow the tutorial https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup
You can send files from the PC to the phone with Right Click -> Send To -> Bluetooth phone. For receiving files you start "gnome-obex-server" and from the phone you send a file and accept it on the PC.

- Other applications for managing the phone (not tested): http://www.gammu.org/wiki/index.php?...ammu:Main_Page

- Install "gsm-utils". Functions include: modification of phone books and reading, writing, sending and receiving SMS messages.

- AT commands for retrieving information about your phone, for dialing numbers, controlling the media player, adding a custom menu in the phone. All these commands work from the PC through the USB cable or through bluetooth. Link: http://stefans.datenbruch.de/k750i/atcmds.shtml
How to use the AT commands:
1. Open 2 terminals
2. Connect the USB cable or activate the bluetooth on the PC and phone
3. Execute: cat -s /dev/ttyACM0" in one terminal
4. Execute: echo "command" > /dev/ttyACM1 in the second terminal. Where command is the AT command you want to execute. You will see the result of your command in the first terminal.
Example: echo "AT*SEMP=1" > /dev/ttyACM1 will start the playback of the media player.

- The Sony-Ericsson official extensive AT command reference: http://developer.sonyericsson.com/ge...do?docId=65054

- Remote Control and some other tips & tricks: http://stefans.datenbruch.de/k750i/

Most of the above was tested and it worked. Some of the links use specific phone models but the information and the commands are applicable to the majority of the Sony-Ericsson models. The AT commands also work with other brands supporting AT commands like: Nokia, Motorola, and maybe others.

If you have questions do ask.

Have you found a linux program which is able to flash the phone (for firmware flashing, patches, repair etc)?

From what I've searched so far I didn't found a native application (native to Linux) that would flash the phone.

I tested Setool Lite through Wine in Linux and it worked, but I cannot use properly the DCU-60 USB cable. In Linux all the drivers are embedded in the kernel, and I cannot install Windows drivers in Wine, Wine just uses all the devices that the kernel recognizes. The Linux kernel interacts with the phone just as an external storage device and as a modem (AT commands), the S-E drivers or any other third-party drivers are usable just on Windows. So, the trick (Pressing C and connecting the cable) does not work in Linux because the Linux kernel doesn't support this.

The conclusion: So far, I didn't find any way to flash the firmware in Linux

You can also use wammu, it's a tool for managing almost all phones, but works like a charm with k750/w800 :)

You can also use Kmobiletools www.kmobiletools.org to sync your messages, contacts,etc. It works on KDE.

The one and only reason: Windows suxx! And if you're a linux user you surely don't want to contaminate your system with windows just to work with ur phone.
I knew that there are tools for synchronisation but I'm interested in a flash prog for linux.
In fact I don't need it right now but I'm curious.

Hi, i use linux for most of time too. about gnome-obex-server, do you guys know how to change default dir from Desktop to other? I'd like to change it to my mobile stuff dir.

And for video convert, ffmpeg is the great tool. But if you love some more visual way, i reccomend avidemux (Avidemux - Main Page). I use ffmpeg to convert original video(-: wmv) to mpeg and do the rest (chop, crop, resize, encode, etc) in avidemux.

For flashing, i wish it could have one too. But until now, there's no clue about that kind of application -_-'

You have to write a special USB driver for the phone first to get flashing working.
One that recognises the phone during that press-c-plug-cable sequence and does the right thing after that. (i.e. send the "open sesame" bytes)

For working with at commands, just use the rfcomm facility of the bluetooth subsystem and
connect your minicom terminal program to /dev/rfcomm0. The at commands are documented on se site somewhere (pdf). Also you can just type at* to see a list of supported commands. Most of them are undocumented :(