Fix for Sony Ericsson phones (MTE Beta)

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Lots of Mobile Trail Explorer users have complained that application doesn’t work with Sony Ericcson phones. Latest version (1.8) doesn’t even seem to start. Phone only displays “Operation Failed” error message.

Fixed Sony Ericsson bug

Fortunately there are some active people in the community as one of the users discovered the source for the problem. He wrote the solution to the Google Code’s project site describing that the use of Samsung and Siemens specific APIs for the backlight feature was causing the trouble. When references were removed from the code base the application worked without problems.

import com.samsung.util.LCDLight;
import com.siemens.mp.game.Light;
...

Shortly after this I made the same changes to the code and I uploaded the fixed version for people to try out and I have already received multiple positive feedbacks from this change. Please try it out yourself and report back if the problems with the v1.8 are gone. Note: Unfortunately OutOfMemory exceptions are still there but hopefully we are also able to fix those in the future releases.

Download the beta v1.9 build here.

  • Martin

    Hi,

    I’am using a SE w800i and after a few seconds I still get the message: Last fix …. X seconds.

    Martin

  • http://jrg.free.fr Jerome

    Hi,
    Your soft is wonderfull, and

    V1.9 works on my Sony P990i !
    (Holux M1000 gps)

    THANKS for this last update !

    I can now save the files in D:/document/
    but if I create a special repertory as “MTEdoc”
    it will not save.

    obs:
    connection with bluetooth gps very long:
    not auto with opening, you have to search in options etc
    and waiting time to recognise gps very long
    (and too sensible as it proposes all the neighborhood or street gps)

    It would be interesting if you could exchange with
    Dana Peters and his GPStrack
    http://qcontinuum.org/index.htm

    cause his soft does record not valid tracks with Sony
    P990i, but it sends not valid files per mail
    and you maybe know now how to fix this.
    His gps connection is very quick and auto at opening.
    (Bluelet Bluetooth GUI by Ben Hui)

    Jerome (Paris, France)

  • http://www.substanceofcode.com Tommi Laukkanen

    @Jerome: Thanks for kind words. You will have to set the GPS device only once. After you have configured GPS device you can start using the software right after the start. Thanks for pointing out the GPStrack!

  • Dona

    So far it works on my phone (SE p990i) yay! Thanks for the cool app, it’s just what I need. :)

  • http://flickr.com/photos/the_defiance/tags/dissertation/ Stuart

    Hey, i’m a final year multimedia student in London, UK and I’d just like to thank you so much for making your software GPL. It meant i was able to modify and use it in my dissertation. Having never programmed a MIDlet in my life i had a rather ambitious plan to use a GPS enabled mobile device to send live location data and content to a web server. So far i’ve managed to capture a total of over 6,000 coordinates using your modified software.

    I’ve just completed a quick demo page to finally release some of these points from their mySQL prison and make them accesible to the general public:

    http://stuartgleave.com/fyp/demo/admin/gmapstest_XML.php?file=Uxbridge_Haywards.xml

    In the system the user can see all their logged points and decide which they wish to publish for public access.

    My deadline is in two weeks so there’s still time to do some tweaking and hopefully implement a live tracking option.

    I’m writing up the documentation for the project now and i’d really appreciate some feedback from you along the lines of:

    - Whether you could see a useful service growing out of this prototype and the kind of people you think might be interested in using it.
    - Ideas on how to improve it.
    - How you feel about your code being used this way.
    - Anything else you’d care to mention.

    Thanks again :)

  • http://www.substanceofcode.com Tommi Laukkanen

    @Stuart: Thanks! I always like it when people come up with brilliant ideas using my code. Your solution is very interesting. I would totally see that there would be users for that. It’s like a journey diary with photos and videos.

    How did you implement the geo tags for your photos? Did you integrate the MM API in the Mobile Trail Explorer or did you use other app to do that? I’d be very interested in seeing that implementation if you will. That’s what GPL is all about after all :)

  • http://flickr.com/photos/the_defiance/tags/dissertation/ Stuart

    Hi again,

    Originally i had hoped to learn enough about J2ME development to add functionality which would allow me to manage my phones camera and upload content from within the MIDlet. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be, and i just couldn’t get my head around it in the time available, so i decided to cut my losses and offload a lot of the work to the user and PHP.

    The modified Mobile Trail Explorer runs in the background uploading co-ordinates as frequently as it can. I only added a few lines of code to tell it to open a connection and request a URL. The URL has the lat, lng etc values appended to it and accesses a PHP script which strips them from the address and stores them in a database.

    The user takes photos/video/etc with their phone as normal. When they want to upload one they navigate to a page in their mobiles web browser and proceed to upload it via a simple form. On completion the PHP modifies the database accordingly, so the file is tied to the location. This means the delay between a photo being taken and it being uploaded is noticeable on the map. I can get around that by using the EXIF data to plot it instead of the file upload time, but the problem would still remain for videos (no EXIF :/).

    What’s the MM API? It’s too late to work with it now, but it sounds like it might have offered a solution to this problem. Now that i think about it, i should append the GPS data to the EXIF while i’m mucking about with it.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that in an ideal world everything would be done in the MIDlet, but i don’t have the know how!

    The code i added will be in my documentation which i’ll be sure to link you to when i hand in the project.

  • Ajay Ramaswamy

    In case you want to experiment with self signed apps – I found a discussion in german at this url http://www.gpslog.info/viewtopic.php?t=19

    I am using MTE on a Nokia 3500 Classic and US Globalsat BT-359 and most things except drawing maps works