K800i - Any cool stuff i can do with it?

[Conrad11]

So I bought this phone, second hand for £40. It's only going to be used a spare phone, cause i like my current phone quite a lot (Motorola W377), and although the motorola software is complete rubbish and way too slow, i like the look, feel and weight of the phone.

Anyways - now that I have the K800i to play with (gunna stick blyk sim in it), i was wondering whether there was any cool stuff to do with it?

I mean, its going to be a multi-purpose type thing: spare phone, remote control (for media center), mp3 player, camera....etc....

Is it possible for the phone to connect to the internet, but via bluetooth? (Where my PC is the "host" with the internet)

Cheers for any tips/tricks.

 

[Conrad11]

Download Sony Ericsson PC suite. You'll be able to setup your phone as a BT modem with ease.

I dont want the phone to be the modem....i want it the other way around. I want the pc to be the modem and the phone to surf the internet.

 

[Conrad11]

Internet over bluetooth isn't simple, but it can be done. I have done it with my K750i and K810i. You need the SE SDK and the J2ME SDK to start with.

Have a look at this thread, particularly the third post. This old page is very useful as well. Between them, they got me sorted.

Took me a while to get it working, but once done, it's easy to connect to (connection has to be initiated from the PC end). Give it a go and see how it goes, post back either way or with any problems!

This technique was designed for the K750i, but works with K810i and I'm guessing should therefore work with K800i, as the hardware between the two K8 series phones is identical.

Jon

Thanks for the links Jon, just reading through them now.

I can understand if it is long process to setup initially, but when it is setup, will it just work, or is it a long process everytime i want to connect to the internet? Will I have to do anything on the PC everytime i want to connect? Or can i just open the browser on the phone, and provding a bluetooth connection is in range it will use it?

Thanks again.


EDIT: What were the speeds like?

 

[Conrad11]

The connection can only be initiated from the PC side, not from the phone. Once everything is set up, it's simply a matter of opening part of the SDK (the links will detail which bit) and connecting the COM port. Takes 10 seconds

I suppose you could get round that by using the "Remote Control" function on the phone to control the PC's mouse in order to do that, but it would take longer.

Hmm - seems a rather complicated, i wonder if it could be made simpler - maybe have the comm port setup automatically on phone initiating connection. I don't actually know what the SDK is/does at the moment so maybe i'll know more when I have done this method.

I am quite surprised there isn't a web browser java application that already does this type of this. Obviously there would have to be a server application too running on the PC which would feed the web pages...maybe have to do some research.

Theoretically, Class 1.x has a max transfer rate of 1Mbit/s (Class 2.0 pushes that up to 2.1Mbit/s, and up to 3Mbit/s with EDR). With overheads, Class 1.x is generally stated as 700Kbit/s. In practise, I reckon 400Kbit/s will be the maximum you can get on a Class 1.x limited connection.

Well I have Dell bluetooth 2.0 EDR, but have a feeling (thinking about it) that the speeds won't be great as when transferring a file from my phone -> PC or vice versa I get a max speed of 30KB/s (or 30Kb/s cant remember).

On the sony site is says this:

Bluetooth™ enables communication across distances of up to 10 metres, and at speeds of up to 720 kb/s per channel.

That doesn't sound very fast according to my bit to byte conversion :S





I shall try this tomorrow and post what i think - thanks.

 

[Conrad11]

I've tried it and i can connect to the first internet page....but as soon as that page has loaded it stops working and if i try and go anywhere else it just says "Connecting" at the bottom and opera crashes.

Opera doesn't appear to be trying to connect via Bluetooth as the connection proxy shows now in/out bytes increase when i try and view a second page. (does the first time though)

Still seems a very long winded way of doing it aswell.