Silent progress

[milkshake]

A secondary SIM card costs about 5 - 10 EUR here in Germany, is it that much more expensive in your area?

That's more than the costs added to the device when we put that at the side

Additionally, a SIM card is stolen pretty fast if you can remove it that easily.

It doesn't work if you have a subscription.

I would like to take a subscription with 20go of data and unrestricted call and sms. I would use a feature phone with a secondary external SIM port, so that I would use the phone to call etc and the Pyra when I need data.

If someone want to stole something, he would rather steal sd cards instead of hardly remarkable and unusable SIM or the whole.

According the pcb photo, 3G module is on the side so it would be easy to do it, I like the idea of being able to change SIM as it is a simple card.

why not just use your phone as a wireless hot spot?

 

[SNESFAN]

If we ever get a dual booting android I'm giving up my main cell phone and just going to use the pyra and a bluetooth headset.

EDIT:

does debian have a RIL and telephoney services built in?

 

[Kiga]

Uhm... The requirement for getting a secondary SIM tied to another one is that you have a subscription

I'm not sure that I understood what you are talking about.

why not just use your phone as a wireless hot spot?

 Good idea  but I use a cheap phone without android and wifi.  I want to have the most minimalist phone.

 

[moxie]

Uhm... The requirement for getting a secondary SIM tied to another one is that you have a subscription

I'm not sure that I understood what you are talking about.

Like this: When you get a subscription, you get a SIM card to put in your phone. That card ties your calls and data traffic and so on to your subscription account. A secondary SIM is when you want to have the data traffic of another device to be connected to the same account. A second SIM, whose data traffic is billed to the same account as the first one. Thus, the need for a subscription.

Or do you mean something else by "subscription"? Sometimes I think the language used for mobile phone/data stuff is intentionally mangled across the atlantic...

 

[WizardStan]

does debian have a RIL and telephoney services built in?

The radio is just a TTY and USB audio device. Send AT commands to the TTY to start a call (or get data, or whatever) an open the microphone/speaker on the audio device to send and receive audio. If nothing else exists someone can whip together a bash script which uses arecord/aplay to dial the number and redirect audio to the actual sound hardware for a start.

 

[Grench]

Well, it looks like there still could be room on the back.

That picture was from before they added the extra microUSB port.

-God Ginrai

The picture may still look the same with the extra microUSB port.  To my understanding it is on the opposite side of the board as one of the USB ports - with the microUSB and that USB 2 port technically in mechanical conflict.  With really skinny plugs both are theoretically usable though.

So, the microUSB port, to my understanding, lives on the keyboard side of the board.

 

[God Ginrai]

why not just use your phone as a wireless hot spot?

 Good idea  but I use a cheap phone without android and wifi.  I want to have the most minimalist phone.

 There's also Bluetooth and USB tethering. Both of those should work on your phone even without WiFi.

The picture may still look the same with the extra microUSB port.  To my understanding it is on the opposite side of the board as one of the USB ports - with the microUSB and that USB 2 port technically in mechanical conflict.  With really skinny plugs both are theoretically usable though.

So, the microUSB port, to my understanding, lives on the keyboard side of the board.

Interesting. However, wouldn't that mean that we would have 2 microUSB ports on the back that have different sides up? That inconsistency sounds like it would cause some frustration for users.

-God Ginrai

 

[SNESFAN]

does debian have a RIL and telephoney services built in?

The radio is just a TTY and USB audio device. Send AT commands to the TTY to start a call (or get data, or whatever) an open the microphone/speaker on the audio device to send and receive audio. If nothing else exists someone can whip together a bash script which uses arecord/aplay to dial the number and redirect audio to the actual sound hardware for a start.

I'm generally familiar with how most of that works and I agree it can be recreated for basic functionality, but I doubt the entire framework can be whipped up in a simple shell script. Android has these services, APIs and layers already built in and I believe excels at it with polish included. Listener services, GUI apps for settings, radio programming, phone dialers, SIM management, sms/mms etc etc. Recreating all these things that do everything that already exists seems like a giant pain. It would be worth looking into a solution that already exists and can be used.

 

[WizardStan]

I'm generally familiar with how most of that works and I agree it can be recreated for basic functionality, but I doubt the entire framework can be whipped up in a simple shell script.

Oh yeah, to get anything other than just "dial number, talk" will require a lot more work. There's a framework called "ofono" which looks promising. Turns out it's even part of the Debian repository. There may be better solutions as well, I haven't really looked, that was just the first hit I got that looked remotely useful.

 

[Kiga]

Uhm... The requirement for getting a secondary SIM tied to another one is that you have a subscription

I'm not sure that I understood what you are talking about.

Like this: When you get a subscription, you get a SIM card to put in your phone. That card ties your calls and data traffic and so on to your subscription account. A secondary SIM is when you want to have the data traffic of another device to be connected to the same account. A second SIM, whose data traffic is billed to the same account as the first one. Thus, the need for a subscription.

Or do you mean something else by "subscription"? Sometimes I think the language used for mobile phone/data stuff is intentionally mangled across the atlantic...

Thanks. That's what I meant.

Uhm... The requirement for getting a secondary SIM tied to another one is that you have a subscription

It's about 10€ per month to have a clone SIM while the subscritption is 20€. Also my operator don't even offer that.

Is there someone who know how to clone recent SIM cards?

why not just use your phone as a wireless hot spot?

 Good idea  but I use a cheap phone without android and wifi.  I want to have the most minimalist phone.

 
There's also Bluetooth and USB tethering. Both of those should work on your phone even without WiFi.

You can't do that on a 30€ Nokia phone without android, and I forgot that it don't even have 3G. I have a phone as small as possible, and otherwise I would not carry it everywhere with the Pyra.

Even without that issue, an accessible sim card port would be a good point, to be able to plug a data source anytime. Maybe we could copy and write SIM cards since phones are able to write and copy on SIM, it would be hardly possible if you have to turn off your Pyra and remove battery everytime.

 

[Grench]

The picture may still look the same with the extra microUSB port.  To my understanding it is on the opposite side of the board as one of the USB ports - with the microUSB and that USB 2 port technically in mechanical conflict.  With really skinny plugs both are theoretically usable though.


So, the microUSB port, to my understanding, lives on the keyboard side of the board.

Interesting. However, wouldn't that mean that we would have 2 microUSB ports on the back that have different sides up? That inconsistency sounds like it would cause some frustration for users.

-God Ginrai

The Pandora's USB ports were always upside-down.  Nobody seems to have been too confused.

The Pyra's ports will probably be upside-down too - will this one be right side up?  No idea.  I'm betting that in the various versions of this ubiquitous part floating around, there are some that go either direction?

Even if this one port is 'flipped' compared to the others, it's not likely to be an ongoing source of confusion.  People will figure it out pretty quick.

 

[WizardStan]

People will figure it out pretty quick.

Provided they're aware that one of the ports is a debug serial/charging port. There are going to be a few people that forge ahead and plug things in without reading the manual, or anything.

 

[God Ginrai]

You can't do that on a 30€ Nokia phone without android, and I forgot that it don't even have 3G. I have a phone as small as possible, and otherwise I would not carry it everywhere with the Pyra.

I bet you can. Bluetooth tethering was a lot more prevalent before Android came out. Most any phone that can get data and has Bluetooth can do it, including most any Nokia phone.

EDIT:

Even if this one port is 'flipped' compared to the others, it's not likely to be an ongoing source of confusion. People will figure it out pretty quick.

Sure, they'll be able to figure it out quickly, but muscle memory will likely have them constantly attempting incorrect inserts. This is why I said that it could potentially be frustrating for the user.

-God Ginrai

 

[WizardStan]

My first cell phone from around 2004 (Nokia 6820) had bluetooth tethering. Data rates were entirely prohibitive and I never used it, ever, but I was aware of its existence.

 

[Natsu]

If we can't get a headset built in, is it possible for a bluetooth to come with it and a slot to put it in?

 

[God Ginrai]

If we can't get a headset built in, is it possible for a bluetooth to come with it and a slot to put it in?

That's basically the gist of what Grench was requesting with his Bluetooth Stylus idea.

-God Ginrai

 

[Natsu]

That's basically the gist of what Grench was requesting with his Bluetooth Stylus idea.

-God Ginrai

I know, but I don't want the stylus and Bluetooth to be the same thing.

 

[God Ginrai]

That's basically the gist of what Grench was requesting with his Bluetooth Stylus idea.

-God Ginrai

I know, but I don't want the stylus and Bluetooth to be the same thing.

Well, I don't see where there would be room anywhere else. And unless it was a neat gimmick like a Stylus/Headset, I don't think many people would want to pay extra for its inclusion.

-God Ginrai

 

[DrCJBoduma]

The backside makes sense to me for some use cases: if you put it on a table and connect it to an external audio system, it looks nicer at the back. Also when playing games in bed with earphones, it's nice if you can let the front of the device rest on your belly. The only advantage of putting it in the front is that you can use a cable that is 10cm shorter when using it like a handheld, but I think that's an insignificant advantage.

I think I am way too immature to take part in this sensible thread :wacko: (Or maybe I should stop reading viz)

 

[Grench]

That's basically the gist of what Grench was requesting with his Bluetooth Stylus idea.

-God Ginrai

I know, but I don't want the stylus and Bluetooth to be the same thing.

Well, I don't see where there would be room anywhere else. And unless it was a neat gimmick like a Stylus/Headset, I don't think many people would want to pay extra for its inclusion.

-God Ginrai

I just ordered the non-stylus version of that pen-style headset to check it out.  Price dropped to $35 on it vs the $90 price for the stylus version.  I'll see how it works out talking on a BT pen anyway.

It probably isn't a good option to mount within the Pyra, but as a companion device it could be pretty handy.

The problem with mounting most BT headsets in a device storage compartment is that they're relatively bulky - curved ear holder pieces, big ear buds coming out at 90* to the stick, etc...  It's the same reason I don't keep one in my pocket.