Bsquare power handheld- wireless and BT advice please!

I'm thinking about buying the BSquare Power Handheld so I can have a play around. The device doesn't have BT or Wireless but supports either via an SDIO slot. As it's a phone too i'd like to use it with my BT headset. I'd also like to remove the BT card when I get to work so that I can put a wifi card in and surf the net, collect mail, etc.

Has anyone used this device and if so do they have any first hand knowledge of using either a BT card or Wireless card in the SDIO slot.

Thanks in advance for any help, Jamm.

I don't have first hand knowledge, but I heard somebody has gotten a certain BT card to work with this. I cannot recall which one, or what files you would need tho. Hope you can find more info on that.

For WiFi I have doubts. You have to look for an SDIO WiFi card with drivers for CE .Net 4.1. I think 4.1 doesn't have Zero Config, only 4.2 does (somebody confirm this?). So drivers that rely on that feature would not work on 4.1

By the way, make sure your mobile service uses a compatible GSM frequency for that phone.

Thanks, GSM is fine so that won't present a problem. I just don't fancy holding that brick to my ear

Anyway if it looks like it could work it may be worth the risk.

I'll post again when I get the device and maybe leave a review?

Thanks, GSM is fine so that won't present a problem. I just don't fancy holding that brick to my ear

Anyway if it looks like it could work it may be worth the risk.

I'll post again when I get the device and maybe leave a review?

I do have a bsquare power handheld. At first I want to sell it, but since my Toshiba E800 is gone I thingking to use this device. There's a review from http://www.brighthand.com/article/bsquare_power_handheld where you can see there's picture of Bsquare PH using Socket SD BT. But it seems you want to use it with BT headset/handsfree? CMIIW I don't think you can do that with external BT. That leave my interest to use SD slot for wifi. In the another thread of this forum someone report they could use Pretec CF Wifi for CE .net. Which give us a hope the SD will be working too. But in http://www.expansys.cn/forumthread.asp?code=113280&thread=32 there's some problem. Does anybody there have bsquare too?

4.1 DOES have zero config. Even 4.0 has it.

well, I have one and have trouble getting alot of things working,

Socket BT SDIO card may work with standard drivers if not on there website they say they will make custom drivers for you. They have a WiFi card as well but they will not build custom drivers for this one (yet).

Pretc WiFi SDIO didnt work for me even though its advertised to work with WinCE 4.x

if anybody finds what SDIO cards work with this device then please tell me

I'm thinking of sticking linux on this baby then at least i can play with some source code to get them to work.

the only problem i can see with this is getting the phone to work but there are projects out there to make the XDA work on linux.

Some times ago, I have wrote to Bsquare support.


This is their answer:

Hi Daniele,

There are SDIO wi-fi cards available such as those made by Socket or Sandisk or even Toshiba.

The terminology can get a bit confusing. Typically when a SD card is referred to, that card is only available for Storage. In some ways you can think of a SD card as a modern day floppy disk except the storage capacity is much greater.

There are also SDIO cards which have the same number of pins as a SD card but these are used for Input/Output applications such as Wi-Fi, GPRS, Bluetooth, etc.

There are even "combination cards" that have both a memory storage area as well as a SDIO portion.

For more information about SD & SDIO cards you can visit the following website:

www.sdcard.org

I have bluetooth working on my bSquare PHH

I use a socket SDIO BT card
The standard bluetooth software stack is the only one I could get to work (I tried about 12!!!)
The PHH doesn't support headset profile - just serial so it can only really be used for file transfer.

Mike

Hi, Bsquare has sent me the driver for the Socket wifi card!

Hi, Bsquare has sent me the driver for the Socket wifi card!


You can download it from my site:

www.ingegnerloizzo.com/Maui_Beta_5.zip

Report any success!

Edited by |--LuMeN--| 2005-07-26 11:52 AM

hi, this is the link:


http://www.ingegnerloizzo.com/Maui_Beta_5.zip


Daniele

Bluetooth is a little bit pointless if you cant use your bt headset with it. i mean you can get routers that support bt and be able to go on the internet but is a bit of a work around solution and doesnt help you when you are on the move.

I was wondering how easy it would be to install PPC to this gizmo? I think that would solve everyones problems with drivers support, headset support and software support...

bSquare informed me of a device that plugs into the headphone jack on the PHH and allows bluetooth headsets to be used. I haven't used it but if anyone is interested I can post the link (I don't have it to hand).

I don't think PPC is a valid install - there is more hope of ce.net 4.2 or ce.net 5.0 if anyone has the ability to:

a) get all the drivers necessary
b) be able to 'flash' the ROM

Mike

well heres the link for doing it if anyones intrested

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wcemigrate5/html/wce50orimigratingfromearlierversionofwindowsce.asp