pitter patter on the keyboard

About a year ago I shared my nightmarish adventure on the Keybo2 with you. It’s finally dying and I’ll be moving soon so I decided it was high time for a new phone. In my time with the Keybo, Telus and Virgin began offering actual smartphones on their prepaid plans. Unfortunately, Telus is the only carrier with a true one-number-unlimited feature which I need to tunnel all of my calls through a VoIP incoming/dial-out gateway for unlimited North America calling and great justice.

I was a little wary given my caged experience on the keybo; I expected captive portals and locked down features abound. I talked myself into it though, realizing if I really liked it I would probably return it, drop all the VoIP buggery and get a real plan with an incumbent provider. Imagine my delight when I turned it on and:

• Connected to my access point
• Downloaded an SSH client from the REAL android market for FREE
• Created a VPN and shelled into a server
• Browsed a bunch of websites
• Installed and ran a terminal emulator
• Enabled built-in mobile hotspot (tethering)

At this point I knew I was in love; even though the prepaid data on Telus is crap ($10/250MB), totally unrestricted wifi makes up for that by letting one sync and cache certain apps before heading out. Kudos to Telus for embracing tethering; to tether the Keybo you have to unlock the service menu and grab your PPP credentials then use dial-up modem emulation over BlueTooth or USB.  Unfortunately, the terminal emulator doesn’t really give you any access to your phone unless you install a custom (rooted) ROM. I’m two weeks in and haven’t needed to root my phone yet but if the urge arises expect another article. Interestingly, the NSA released SE Android yesterday but at present it looks like it must be built from source and probably won’t be very noob-friendly for a while to come.

Here are the specs, courtesy of GSMArena:

2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 2100
Announced	2010, July
Status	Available. Released 2010, October
Dimensions	113.5 x 59 x 13.3 mm
Weight	129 g
Type	TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors
Size	320 x 480 pixels, 3.2 inches (~180 ppi pixel density)
Alert types	Vibration, MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker	Yes
3.5mm jack	Yes
Card slot	microSD, up to 32GB, 2GB included
Internal	170 MB user available, 512 MB RAM
GPRS	Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps
EDGE	Class 10, 236.8 kbps
Speed	HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
USB	Yes, microUSB
Camera	3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels, autofocus
	Geo-tagging, face and smile detection, Beauty Shot
Video	Yes, VGA@18fps
Flash	No
OS	Android OS, v2.2 (Froyo), upgradable to v2.3
Chipset	Qualcomm MSM7227
CPU	600 MHz ARM 11
GPU	Adreno 200
Sensors	Accelerometer, proximity, compass
Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Browser	HTML
Radio	Stereo FM radio
GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
Features	- Social networking integration - Google Search, Maps, Gmail - YouTube, Google Talk - DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player - MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player - Document viewer/editor - Organizer - Voice memo - Predictive text input

Although the camera’s resolution is no improvement over the Keybo I’m thrilled to finally have automatic, mechanical focus. Now instead of snapping 50 shots to get one decent one I’m down to something like 5. My Optimus shipped with Android 2.3 and a now-defunct app called the LG App Advisor.

Now that I had become introduced to my new toy it was time to get that totally badass animated weather wallpaper HTC Sense UI users have. To do this without purchasing Beautiful Widgets we first replace the default launcher (LG’s kind of sucks anyway) with GO Launcher EX. Then download GO Weather, both available through the Android Market. GO Weather is a beautiful (literally) piece of software that provides three interfaces:

App – This sits in your app tray and has its own video theme. Opening the app provides detailed weather information and updates the weather data.
Widget – There are four different sized widgets that can be included in your launcher; depending on the skin you choose they may display different things.
Live Wallpaper – Set your launcher’s background to the GO Weather Live Wallpaper and download a video theme to get a similar effect as the App.

Next I wanted to grab a few apps that would be handy around the city. TTC Alerts  is probably the neatest, most useful app I have installed so far. When a diversion, delay or cancellation happens on Toronto’s bus, subway and light rail system I am notified by a vibration and red TTC icon in my status bar. Dragging down the status bar gives me the details. When the issue clears up and everything is moving smoothly once more the icon turns green. Essential for anyone who relies on The Rocket.

Another sweet app for TTC users is Transit Now Toronto. You can use your GPS to find the closest bus stop and plan your route. The free version of this app does not support the Alerts function but the TTC Alerts app discussed above makes this sort of moot. If you’re lazy like me you may also like the TTC Subway Efficiency Guide which helps users pick the right place to stand on platforms so they are better situated to stairs and escalators at their destination. Toronto PATH Map is a pocket-sized map of the world’s largest underground shopping complex.

Being a man of the province I also downloaded Go Mobile from Ryerson University. Go Transit is Ontario’s inter-municipal transit system, it operates a combination of diesel-electric locomotives and coach busses to interconnect the towns and cities of Southern Ontario. My biggest complaint about this app is it requires a data connection to even get to the main menu. I feel the bus and train schedules could at least be cached daily. A minor gripe is that it is impossible to plan a route end-to-end where there is a connecting bus or train.

Speaking of caching, data is going to cost a lot on a prepaid plan so anything we can grab while at home or near a hotspot is golden. Nowhere can I see this being more beneficial than with GPS navigation. The apps that came loaded on my droid – and many of the third party apps out there -  rely on a data connection and Google Maps. Fortunately, MapDroyd has you covered: you can download a pre-compiled map of a given geographical area to your SD card .

That brings me to entertainment: with all of the weather and TTC updates and bells and whistles going on in the background non-stop I expect to be chewing through my 250MB quota without even using the connection. Obviously, browsing youtube is not going to be an option on the road. In addition to audio and video files off the PC I have found these interesting apps which will let you store their content for offline viewing:

• The Toronto Star – News notifications, background synchronization and off-line viewing of one of Canada’s most respected news outlets.
• TED Air – Download videos of TED talks to watch at any time. Very slick looking but also very crashy. I have had a _lot_ of problems with this one.

To track my data usage I’ve been using DroidStats because it’s one of few which track wifi in addition to 3G. DroidStats also comes with 4 different sized widgets to keep you informed of your quota usage on the launcher.

I’ve decided to keep this phone for the time being. The wifi combined with $10 data plan and one-number-unlimited still make it more economical for me to put up with routing my calls through VoIP than ponying up for a real phone on a proper data plan. It’s a big shock for me, giving Telus a good review but I’m so happy to finally have a cellphone that DOES things.

For $99 I have no regrets. This time.

I just bought my first cellphone in years. I know that sounds strange coming from an IT guy but my logic is sound: if you don’t have one your boss can’t call it. One of my colleagues is a big VoIP genius and he pointed out that by using a dial-out gateway and Telus’ one-number-unlimited feature it’s possible to have the equivalent of unlimited calling for $7 per month on a prepaid phone – plus the one-time cost of provisioning a phone number that forwards incoming calls back through the gateway (about $25). I’ve been horny for the newer android-based phones that are in circulation in the states but most of the ones I want don’t operate on the Canadian bands yet and/or it will take a long time before they are rolled out up here, thus I decided for unlimited calling at $7 a month I may as well settle for a cheap phone in the mean time. I decided to tack on $10/month unlimited web browsing because it makes the e-mail and instant messaging packages moot.

The Keybo 2 is the closest thing to a smart phone in Telus’ prepaid lineup, and at the time of writing the most expensive – clocking in at a modest $99. It sports a 160x96px external screen and flips open to reveal a large QWERTY keyboard and 320x240px internal screen. There are stereo speakers mounted on either side of the internal screen and to be perfectly frank they are better sounding than my laptop’s. The Keybo 2 has a 3.2MP flash camera that takes decent pictures but crappy closeups.

In the United States (and possibly elsewhere) the Keybo 2 is marketed as the enV3. The Canadian model number is CX9200 and the US model is VX9200; as far as I can tell the difference is cosmetic. Verizon seems to be the main carrier for enVs in the states and Koodo is popular in Canada as well. Interestingly the Koodo and Verizon firmwares of the phone do not include Java support. It would seem that the popular thing to do with your Keybo is flash it to Telus’ firmware if you’re on a different provider. Unfortunately Telus’ firmware is so locked down that one wonders just how bad Verizon’s could be.

I’ve had a hell of a time over the past few days trying to find information on hacking the Keybo 2, most of the results I have found thus far only apply to the original Keybo (aka enV2 or VX9100), for example it no longer seems possible to simply overwrite application slots with other java apps to install them on the phone. Telus’ proxy prevents users from downloading apps from the web that don’t come from their store. I have tried altering the proxy settings to use a personal proxy on ports 8118, 80 and 110 but the browser fails to connect. I even tried popping the opera mini .jad and .jar files onto an SSL site and altering the .jad to pull from the new URL to no avail – the download begins, posts, then returns this error:

Issue has been reported.
Please try again later.

950 Server Error (-1289)

then the browser bounces back to the Telus apps store. I tried renaming the .jar to .jax (and updating the .jad accordingly) also to no avail.  I am beginning to suspect that the firmware has been modified to enforce some sort of DRM for applications. Custom ringtones are a pain in the ass as they definitely require DRM, fortunately they can be dropped into the phone’s filesystem at /brew/shared/ringtone/ with BitPim (1.0.7+ supports the CX9200) and given DRM with the Sony-Ericsson DRM Packager.

I couldn’t find the right SPC code for my particular phone anywhere (unlike the old Keybo/enV2 it does not have nvm_XXXX files) so I had to grab it with CDMA Workshop (it’s 105495 by the way). With the correct SPC you can access the programming menus for your phone by dialing:

##DEBUG
##TELUS
##BROWSER
##TEST
##DATA

Note that you can get into ##DEBUG on any LG phone with the unlock code 183729.

Overall, this phone pisses me off because it could do so much more but Telus makes it extremely difficult to modify. While there is some community support for the Keybo/enV2 those of us with the new Keybo 2s and enV3s are practically on our own at present time. The fact that the Telus firmware is considered “the good firmware” is extremely discouraging, flashing your old Verizon enV2 to Telus’ old Keybo firmware may let you load on some java apps but how to do this successfully on the newer Keybo 2′s firmware is as yet a mystery.