Mobile phones

G2

GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications was the second generation and got some evolutionary expansions as the General packet radio service (GPRS) for digital communications.GSM900/1800 refers to the frequencies (900MHz and 1.8GHz) used in Europe and other parts of the world (except North America, where my old Nokia phone really remained silent). Some countries have started to switch of their 2G networks, so older phones will become useless.Other protocols used in G2 are: EDGE, HSCSD

Data rate <0.2Mbit/2

G3

3G means the 3rd generation mobile telecommunications project and their standards that should have brought harmonization into the world, so our G3 phone should also work outside your country.

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) got introduced with G3 phones.

Data rate <0.39Mbit/s (UTMS)

An other protocol used in 3G is HSPA taht boosted up data rate to <7.2Mbis/s and with HSPA+ to <42Mbit/s

G4

With G4 LTE got introduced with data rate <150Mbit/s. (G4+ uses LTEadv with a datarate <450Mbit/s). G5 is expected to bring 1Gbit/s

Connections using xG phones

Phone connections are not free, therefore dial up and download will be too expensive and slow to many applications. It might be a good investment to buy a new phone and have the money in a new hardware piece and not in high telephone bills.

Plug in a modern USB phone might result in a additional Ethernet connection. Check it with udevadm monitor and/or see what is going on with the udev rules in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

# USB device 0x0bb4:0x0b5f (usb)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="80:00:60:0f:e8:00", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"

The phone can be accessed via eth1, this can be the hard way or using networkmanager. To have it working, the phone must be setup to connect to the right 3g network on one side and to use usb on the other side.

The phone may have different operating modes to usb, as acting as external drive to have access to the memory card. Therefore it is important to have the right setup.

For 3G phones, bluetooth can be taken as alternative to usb to make an Internet connection.

To see what is supported via usb type lsusb and check the device number. Then lsusb -s <node number> -v | grep bInterfaceProtocol pops up the protocol. Picture Transfer Protocol and AT-commands might pop up.


Linurs startpage