Linux Applications for Mobile (Cellular) Phones

Tools for mobile Linux (TmL)

The Tools for mobile Linux (TmL) project has been created to address the gap where existing Eclipse projects do not entirely satisfy the needs of developers of native C/C++ applications for mobile devices. Even though the project intends to eventually address the complete application development cycle, the initial scope comprises support to constrution of a device emulator framework, and a simulated end-to-end environment to test enterprise applications.

Dejitun

Dejitun creates a jitter (variance in round-trip time) removing tunnel between hosts to remove the jitter that normally destroys TCP performance. An example of high-jitter connections is mobile Internet such as 3G and GPRS.

3gpwiz - 3gp movie wizard

3gpwiz converts any movie format to a 3gp movie, suitable for watching on a mobile phone.

GNOME Phone Manager

GNOME Phone Manager is a program created to allow you to control aspects of your mobile phone from your GNOME 2 desktop.

Amos-Effect

Amos-Effect parses and visualizes mobile phone connection data provided by O2 in the form of downloadable CSV files. [Amos-Effect] calculates mobile phone charges on a global and monthly basis. [Amos-Effect] also determines average charges derived from the pre-calculated sums. [Amos-Effect] visualizes these stats by textual and by graphical means (using perl's libgd module).

Cibyl

Cibyl is a programming environment that allows compiled C programs to execute on J2ME-capable phones. Cibyl uses GCC to compile the C programs to MIPS binaries, and these are then recompiled into Java bytecode. The programs are not parsed during runtime, and Cibyl is therefore relatively well-performing. With Cibyl, games written in C can be ported to J2ME without switching language.

GCalSync

GCalSync is an application that lets you do a two-way synchronization between Google Calendar and your phone's built-in calendar. You can download events to your phone, or add an event on your phone and upload it to Google Calendar.

gsmcal2html

gsmcal2html downloads calendar events from a GSM device and creates an HTML calendar. Javascript displays the current month by default, but you can browse back or forward. Auto-exportation to a server is included (with scp). Colors, widths, etc. are customizable. Included in the package is a small file which you can run as a daemon. It checks whether a GSM device is connected, to trigger automatic generation of the calendar.

umtsmon

UMTSmon is a tool to control and monitor a 3G (WCDMA, UMTS, HSDPA) card in a laptop. It handles PIN codes, operator choice (roaming), sending/receiving SMS, and the setup of the connection.

Comgt

Comgt is a command line tool for controlling, configuring and interacting with Option Wireless 3G and 2G ( HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS, GSM) data devices within the Linux environment.

ObexTool

ObexTool is a graphical frontend for ObexFTP, which is able to communicate with mobiles and other devices using the Obex Protocol. Siemens S45, S45i, SL45i, SL45, C55, S55, M50, MT50, Ericsson R320, T68i, and Sony/Ericsson T300, T610, and Nokia 6230 have been reported to work with obexftp, though it should also work with other phones.

ObexFS

ObexFS is a FUSE-based filesystem using OBEX to access the memory on mobile phones.

KMobileTools

KMobileTools is a nice KDE-based application that allows you to control mobile phones with your PC. It handles full SMS control, dialing calls, reading from phonebook, last dials, received and unanswered calls, and phone status monitoring (battery and signal for now). It's based on a Motorola C350 and C650, but it's also compatible with other mobile phones like Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens.

MobiLog!

MobiLog! is a powerful standalone blogging tool that allows you to update a mobile weblog ("moblog") remotely using any email-capable device, such as a cellular phone. You can even send images from your camera phone and have them automatically posted to your Web site. Additional features include Atom syndication format support, automatic thumbnail creation, a browsable entry archive, password protection for entry submission, and much more.

O2PosTrack

O2PosTrack is a console-based C++ application for retrieving position information from a mobile phone as provided by the (German) O2 mobile phone company. It runs on Linux and Mac OS X, has configurable output streams (CSV file, GNU-Plot data files, etc.) and should work with all GSM-compatible mobile phones connected via serial link (e.g. IR or USB-to-serial converter).

GSM Phone Book Reader

GSM Phone book reader is intended to read your phone book off a GSM phone, using an InfraRed port (by default) or any other serial connection to the device. It has been tested on x86 machines and SHARP Zaurus Linux PDA, with a Motorola Timeport P7389 phone. Note that it will not work with old GSM phones that do not fully implement an AT commands modem, such as Nokia 5110 series.

PhonEMail

PhonEMail enables you to read your email from a handheld Web-browser, like a cell phone. More technically, phonemail.pl provides a Web-based gateway to your IMAP account for HDML browsers/devices.

Ringtone Tools

Ringtone Tools is a set of tools for creating ringtones on mobile phones. rtttl is a popular format for ringtones, you may use it to beam a new ringtone via SMS to your phone. Never pay for ringtones anymore, get them for free.

RTTTL2WAV

RTTL2WAV converts a RTTTL-formatted mobile phone ringing tone to a WAV file. The output of this program can also be copied to stdout as a raw PCM data (linear 44.1kHz signed 16bit integers). It also includes a shell script which allows you to listen ringing tones directly with your sound card.

Kandy - Communicating with your mobile phone

Personal information data like addresses, phone numbers and appointments are usually distributed over a variety of different devices using different technologies, from desktop PC to PDA or mobile phone and even pieces of paper. Ideally all these data would be synchronized and be in a consistent state. While it is difficult to address the paper problem, for the other cases there exists software helping with management and synchronisation of data.
The KDE Desktop provides applications for the management of personal information data like KOrganizer, KAB (the KDE Address Book), KNotes and some others. It also provides synchronisation with Palm Pilots via KPilot. What is missing is the mobile phone part. Kandy provides this.

Phone Manager

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

PyMobile

PyMobile is a pure-Python package designed to communicate with mobile phones through a direct connection (e.g. through Bluetooth). This package can be used to create a variety of mobile applications using Python.

PySerial

PySerial encapsulates the access for the serial port. It provides backends for Python running on Windows, Linux, BSD (possibly any POSIX compilant system) and Jython.

GPRS Easy Connect

Free GUI GPRS connecting program for Linux distributions and FreeBSD.

My Handy Restaurant

My Handy Restaurant is software created to help restaurant waiters and managers in their job. Waiters can choose a restaurant table, assign orders to it and have them automatically printed on printers. "Normal" dishes can also be modified, by adding or removing ingredients. Bills can be printed automatically, even for separated bills. The accounting section allows a restaurant manager to easily administrate the whole accounting (bank accounts, employees, suppliers, income) in an easy way. Stock management is also available, and items quantity is automatically updated. The interface is handheld-sized and is written to be compatible with most handheld browsers.

Exchange Phonebook T39 with ME45

A perl tool to move the phonebook from the Ericsson T39 to the Siemens ME45.

phraze

Phraze takes a telephone number and produces a list of combinations of valid words that can be derived from it, using the keypad of a US phone.

GPE Contacts

GPE Contacts stores contact details such as addresses and is able to categorize them. It uses DBUS to connect to service provider applications (GPE-Beam and GPE-Bluetooth) to provide IrDA (IrOBEX) and Bluetooth (BtOBEX) support for beaming them in vCard format.

Shopping Cart

Shopping Cart is a set of PHP scripts to manage a list of items you need to purchase at different stores. It is targeted at mobile devices with Internet access, and was developed with and for the IXI OGO, though it should work with any HTML-capable browser.

gMobileMedia

gMobileMedia is a simple GTK application used to browse and handle a mobile phone filesystem. It can handle phones with more than one memory area (thanks to Gammu). It lets you easily upload and download images, ringtones, photos, and applications to/from your mobile phone. All you need is a data cable or any other connection method supported by Gammu.

libqrencode

libqrencode is a library for encoding data in a QR Code symbol, a kind of 2D symbology that can be scanned by devices such as a mobile phone with a CCD.

lib378 - Embeddable Predictive Text Library

lib378 is a library for predictive text input like T9(C) and similar. The API is very simple and provides dictionary autocompletion and both partial and full matching. It can be used to get text input from input devices with few keys (like cellphones).

Converting Movies, Videos, DVDs

How to Convert a Video to 3GPP

Newer camera mobiles can take movies from their integrated camera which are encoded in 3GPP (usually with suffix .3gp). This tutorial explains how to convert your video to 3GPP.

Watching Movies on Your Mobile Phone

The format 3GPP is a flavor of QuickTime. Using ffmpeg it's possible to encode directly to 3GPP using free software.

Resources

• Linux Mobile Guide - Installing, Maintaining and Tuning of Linux on Mobile Computers
• Linux and BlueTooth
• Linux and IrDA
• Linux and Cell Phones
• JAVA Applications For Linux PDAs, Cell Phones, ..