About Phone Manager

Phone Manager is a program created to allow you to control aspects of your mobile phone from your GNOME 2 desktop. It is free software, licensed under the GPL.

The software is getting more mature. Current features include:

  • Runs in the background; indicates status on the panel notification area.
  • Display on-screen alert when text message (SMS) arrives
  • Text message (SMS) sending facility
  • Evolution Addressbook integration when sending messages

The software was originally developed by Edd Dumbill, and is currently maintained by Bastien Nocera.

Phone Manager supports any mobile phone that can connect to your computer as a serial port: via Bluetooth, IrDA or a serial cable.

Run the program by selecting Mobile Phone Manager from the System menu, or running gnome-phone-manager from the command line.

Screenshots

Send dialogue

send.png

Preferences Interface

prefs-1.png

Preferences Connection

prefs-2.png

Mailing list

This software can be discussed on the gnome-bluetooth mailing list.

Reporting bugs

Before reporting a bug against Phone Manager make sure it's not a gnokii bug. Install gnokii and use the configuration file created with gnome-phone-manager --config PORT where PORT is the Bluetooth address of your phone or the serial port to which it is attached (/dev/ttyACM0 or similar).

  • for problems receiving SMS try gnokii --smsreader

  • for problems sending SMS try gnokii --sendsms phone_number

  • for other problems try gnokii --monitor

If the same bug appears when using gnokii please report it against libgnokii.

Please report Phone Manager bugs in the GNOME Bugzilla. You can see the existing bugs using this query so as to avoid duplicates.

When reporting bugs related to sending or receiving text messages always provide your exact phone model and a debug output showing the bug.

To save a debug output you can execute the following commands:

gnome-phone-manager --debug 2>&1 | tee logfile

FAQ

Q: My Motorola phone doesn't work?

A: We know, it's a problem with gnokii. Some Motorola phone lies it supports PDU text format, but doesn't, and gnokii only supports PDU formatted texts.

Q: I get the error libglade-WARNING **: could not find widget creation function, what's happening?

A: Install version 0.7, it contains the fix for bug 340412.

Q: I get an error saying Model XXX not supported natively on startup.

A: This means that gnome-phone-manager doesn't know about your phone. File a bug with the output of gnome-phone-manager --identify <bluetooth address>.

Q: Typing the name of a contact from my Evolution addressbook doesn't show me any matches.

A: Make sure that your contact's "Mobile phone" number field is filled in, and that your addressbook is selected for completion in the Evolution Preferences (Edit -> Preferences... -> Autocompletion). This is unnecessary in gnome-phone-manager versions past 0.30.

Q: My phone asks me twice for connection confirmation when using gnome-phone-manager, why, and how can I avoid that?

A: Phones (such as most Nokia phones) that require a driver other than the default driver (the AT driver) need to connect once with the AT driver, to check which model you're using, and then with the proper driver. You can work around it by setting the "Automatic connection without confirmation" to Yes for your computer, in the Bluetooth settings.

Q: My phone doesn't allow connection, or hangs during the connection, what do I do?

A: File a bug with the output of:

gnokii --identify

With this ~/.gnokiirc file:

[global]
port = <Bluetooth address>
model = AT
connection = bluetooth

[logging]
debug = on

Q: My phone uses Symbian, can it use gnapplet?

A: You can see the list of devices that support gnapplet on the gnokii wiki.

Download

Ensure you've downloaded and installed GnomeBluetooth and gnokii (compiled with Bluetooth support).

To use Bluetooth: hit the 'Choose' button in the prefs dialog, and then scan on the device choice dialog to make the system discover your phone: ensure your phone is in 'discoverable' mode first. You will need to pair your phone with your computer before Phone Manager can establish a successful connection.

Pre-requisites for building are listed in the README file in the distribution.

Download the source code on the GNOME FTP site:

You can also get the latest development version in GNOME git, the module is phonemgr:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/phonemgr

Packages

Fedora

  • Packages are in Fedora since Fedora Core 6, and all subsequent releases:

yum -y install gnome-phone-manager

Ubuntu

  • Ubuntu packages available since Dapper in universe

apt-get install gnome-phone-manager


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Attic/PhoneManager (last edited 2018-08-17 18:45:58 by AndreKlapper)