Starting with the A780

[Hagfish]

I have just started using my new A780 motorola phone, and with the help of this great forum and other resources online I have already achieved more than I ever could have on my own. Hopefully I can show my gratitude by contributing back a summary of what I've learnt, to help people who are new to the phone or considering buying it.

1. Buying the phone.
I had previously bought the chinese import version of the phone with no GPS software, but decided this was too limited. The company had a great returns policy and my money (except for the delivery charge) was fully refunded. I then found a place online that offered the UK version, so I bought that. I was again pleased with the service.

2. Buying the SIM.
I had already decided on the contract I wanted, and where I was getting it from, so I had been to an O2 shop and asked them about the phone. (Carphone Warehouse had been incompetent when talking to one of their staff). Although not familiar with the phone, they assured me I could return it within 7 days if I didn't like it, and that they would test whether GPRS would work before selling me the SIM. They said this testing service would cost me some small fee, but they waived it in the end. The test SIM they tried didn't work, but upon trying one of their personal SIMs, the phone accessed a website. Satisfied, I signed up.

3. GPS.
Didn't work when I tested it while walking, but as the passenger in a car it worked fine. I need to do some more tests, but don't be put off if it doesn't work straight away.

4. User dictionary.
For the security conscious, and paranoid, I recommend turning off the user dictionary feature. If you give your girlfriend the phone to write a text message, and the predictive text comes up with "Clarissa", you might have some explaining to do. If you can imagine a variation on this that would affect you, then I suggest you follow my advice. If your A780 user dictionary already has sensitive data in, the simplest thing is to do a master clear as explained in the manual.

5. Mass storage.
Good for taking backups of things on your phone, as well as transferring individual files. I used the instructions here to mount the phone using Linux. It worked right out of the box, after giving the phone some time to switch to USB storage mode. Also, I found that sda1 was the phone memory and sdb1 was the transflash, whereas that Howto seems to disagree. Remember to umount before unplugging the phone, just in case.

6. Transferring large files.
One particular case to mention is transferring large files. I transferred a 30MB file to the phone (leaving only 400kB free) and although I could see the file on my desktop machine under /mnt, I don't believe it was actually on the phone at that point. After issuing the umount command, the console I was using seemed to freeze, so after waiting a while and considering my options, I unplugged the phone. No harm seemed to be done, but the file was not present on the phone. Testing with a smaller file I saw I did have write access, so I tried again on the 30MB file, waiting even longer for the umount to complete, and fortunately it did and the file was then on the phone. Be patient!

7. Creating videos.
Here is the good stuff. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to use patent infringing software, but if you want to make MP4 videos that play on the A780 then here is a page which should give you an idea about what is needed. If you want to tweak them more for the A780, then try something like:
ffmpeg -i <input-file> -s 176x144 -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec aac -r 12 -b 100 <output-file>.mp4
That should turn a ~24 mn episode into a ~30MB file, I hear.

There are some things I haven't found solutions to yet, but they deserve separate topics once I've experimented more. If you have some extra advice about the things I've listed, please add comments below. Hope the above helps someone, who then goes on to find another really cool thing to do with this phone.

[Hagfish]

Just a quick update about my progress with the A780, for people starting to use the GPS feature or considering buying it for that.

Today was my first serious journey since buying the phone, 20 miles each way to somewhere I had never driven before. Inputting the destination was no problem at all, and the car front window mounting that comes with the phone works like a charm. The included cigarette lighter charger is also very convenient, and allows me to charge the phone while it's doing all that GPS and audio and moving maps.

One word of advice, though, if you want to be able to see the maps on screen, make sure you don't have "Phone Lock" turned on under "Security" in the Setup. I found that while driving, this would come on even while speaking instructions to me. "Auto Keylock", however, does not have a bad effect.

The only other minor annoyance was that by the time the voice says "Just ahead, take the ..." to explain which exit on the roundabout to take, I've already got into the wrong lane, or passed the first exit. The obvious fix is to make sure you remember which lane to be in from the previous voice instruction.

Despite a signal strength issue that I'm going to ask about in another post, this device is truly amazing and I sometimes have to remind myself that what it does is actually possible.